


Tiebreak

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tennis, Friends to Lovers, Humor, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Otabek Altin-centric, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:18:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 68,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Elbow digging into his side, JJ exclaims, “Did you see that? Did you see that boy?”He did see that boy.Lifting his head, the boy flicks his long, golden hair out of his face. For all the balletic grace of his tennis, the lightness of his feet, his eyes cut sharp, shards of green.“Yuri,” Otabek says quietly. “That’s his name.”a yuri on ice tennis au.





	1. Chapter 1

Shutting his eyes, Otabek swigs water and does his best to drown out the crowds’ chants with the thunder of his heart.

Again and again, “King! JJ! King! JJ!”

“Thank you,” the umpire says with a pointed clearing of his throat into the mic. The shouts ebb. “Thank you.”

He accepts a towel from a ball boy, gives his forehead a perfunctory swipe before he jogs back out diagonal to JJ. Dropping to the balls of his feet, he sways in ready position, squinting through the blaze of the sun at his opponent. His friend, but not on the court.

He’s not anywhere close to losing, but victory is slipping like sand through his fingers. Quarter finals are far as Otabek has ever come at the US Open, and he will not give up now. Every point he loses is one less chance to play Plisetsky at the finals.

JJ only has to win his own service game to take the second set. Every muscle in Otabek’s body tenses in preparation for JJ’s serve. Zinger. The ball barely glances the far corner of the service box and shoots off into nowhere, spinning high and fast. JJ’s infamous ace. He’s not fast enough to return the ball. That no one could is little consolation.

“Fifteen-love.”

Behind pressed lips, Otabek grinds his teeth. He lunges for the next shot and returns it, getting a comfortable rally going, back and forth. Both players zigzag the court. Exhausting it might be--yet at the edge of fatigue is where Otabek rallies his strength. The staccato bounces settle into his bones, and Otabek goes for the offensive.

Then JJ flows into the shot like a waterfall. Otabek dives, but JJ’s ball smacks down a fatal meter too far for his racquet to retrieve.

Thirty-love.

Fine.

Now he needs to shake off this point. He needs to get back into it.

Plucking his shirt away from his chest, JJ slowly springs the ball off the baseline. Once, twice. The umpire’s buffering of the crowds’ cheering grows increasingly ineffectual. Finally, they quiet. JJ bounces the ball again, slow, one, two. The noon’s eye glints off his white teeth, and the spectators go insane again, inappropriate when a player is already serving to start the point.

Can’t let it get to him. Can’t.

Otabek won the last set after a tiebreak. And in this set, he was up an early break. But JJ has broken back _twice_ and is holding strong on his serve, and now Otabek is the one fighting for footing.

Something snapped in JJ, or rather fell into place, and with the stadium behind him, he seems unstoppable.

JJ drags him back and forth across the court.

With a twist of his forehand, Otabek forces him up to the net to return a short ball.

Recovering, JJ slams his racquet down.

Fast as he can, Otabek chases the ball.

That’s what he does, runs down every point, runs himself into the ground if that’s what he has to do.

He gets back behind the ball. Careens off-balance. His racquet makes contact with the angle all off, and the ball skids towards no-man’s alley.

Out, Otabek’s brain screams inside his skull.

He sees JJ pop his racquet from hand to hand and _hears_ the crowd hold its breath.

The umpire grunts, “Out!”

Forty-love, he thinks with resignation.

“Forty-love.”

 

“We can pack it in anytime, son,” the coach calls at Otabek’s back. To make sure that Otabek, with his still-scrappy English, has heard him, he adds, “I’m ready when you are.”

Shaking his head, Otabek swipes the back of his palm over his sweaty forehead and keeps running. He understood. He just isn’t ready.

Suicides, they call them here, running back and forth between the white lines painted on the court. The drill: try to get in five serves, run a suicide for every fault.

The level two tennis camp players, of whom Otabek at eleven is the oldest, have been drilling since lunch. Dusk, and Otabek hasn’t managed five in a row yet.

Clearly, his coach is prepared to call it in for the day.

Otabek has other ideas.

As he slows out of his last frantic lap across the court, his lungs burn. His throat sticks to itself. But he doesn’t stop for air or for water. That might be pushing his luck, and Otabek can use all the luck he can get. Scurrying over to the ad court, he pulls back his arm and tosses up the ball again.

The side of his racquet glances off the ball, and it jolts into the metal fence. One more suicide.

Digging in the pocket of his worn-out mesh shorts, he unearths another ball and winds up for another serve.

Before he can do anything else, Coach Doug snags him by the elbow. “Hey, easy. You’re just wearing yourself out.”

“I’m getting better,” Otabek insists thickly.

His coach’s silence speaks for itself. At this point, Otabek knowing well that over the course of this month he has been forever stringing along behind, struggling to keep up with kids two years his junior, it’s a feeble sting. “There are gonna be other days, other drills, okay? It’s not the end of the world.”

Otabek swallows. What if it is? “What if there aren’t?”

He knows there are only so many chances left for him, a Kazakh kid with middling talent here in America on what amounts to a pity scholarship. Although he may be young, Otabek already knows that tennis is his world, and he can already feel it spinning out of his reach.

Surprised, or just annoyed, maybe, the coach stares at him, and he stares at the coach.

“One more time.” He’s breathing so hard he has to work to form words around it. “I want to try it one more time, please.”

“‘Please,’ the boy says.” Lifting off his cap, Coach Doug scratches at his sweat-drenched scalp. “Yeah. All right. Finish up this drill.”

Otabek rubs sweat and green tennis fluff off on his shorts, snatches up his racquet, and repeats that motion, that throwing motion that always defeats him.

Ah, so his racquet clatters to the court. But his serve? His serve lands smack in the middle of the box.

“Three more!” Otabek announces over his shoulder as he scrambles to retrieve a ball trundling along the net for his next serve.

“Lord Jesus,” Coach mumbles.

 

After, Otabek buys JJ dinner.

“Can you believe she said yes?” JJ enthuses, not for the first time. Although apologetically bubbly about emerging the victor of their grueling battle on court, JJ is effervescently smug about Isabella accepting his proposal.

Sipping his water, Otabek lets him wait for it. “Yes,” he allows him at last.

“I’m touched, Altin.” JJ chuckles and thumps Otabek on the back. “I should go call my fiancée. You sure you don’t want to split the check?”

Yes, he’s sure. “Good night, JJ.” Otabek should contact his coach as well at some point.

JJ flashes him his initials. “Thanks again for dinner--and you have a good night, too!”

Leaning against the brick wall once he’s paid the check, Otabek thumbs open his phone. _Going to take the scenic route back to the hotel._

His phone lights up with the picture of Coach Doug posing with Otabek and his first junior trophy. Reluctantly, he picks up the call.

“You are not riding your bike back,” Coach rails.

Otabek scratches across the asphalt with his boot. “It’ll only be an hour.”

“I moved our flight out to 7 AM tomorrow.” He can almost hear his frown.

“I’ll be ready.” Doug lets Otabek keep his own disciplined schedule, so Otabek knows his real concern lies elsewhere and is only being displaced onto the hour. As soon as Otabek changed out of his sweat-soaked shorts and shirt after the match, he informed Doug that he wanted to return immediately to his home courts to start hammering out everything that halted his progress through the tournament. Psychology of the match be damned; Otabek knows he has flaws to fix.

Coach _hms._ “Don’t lose a leg. Or your one good arm.”

“Won’t lose my other good arm, either.” Otabek hangs up and straddles the rental bike that was supposed to be picked up an hour ago. For a moment, he holds his face up against the hot night.

No doubt the coming matches are worth watching live rather than catching piecemeal. A part of him would like to lounge around in his hotel room until finals. For someone else, it could be justifiable to take a break.

Today is not a loss. Reaching the quarters at a major is an achievement by almost any measure. And yet it is not a win. It is close, tantalizingly close, and yet he has starved himself of victory.

Jaw set, he swifts out of the parking lot.

He is too hungry to stay.

 

“What the hell was that?” Coach whacks his elbow, and Otabek jerks it close to his body. “Just when I was going on praising your textbook damn technique to Celestino, you pull that shit out?”

Otabek studies the chipped paint on his strings and then lifts his head to look at him calmly.

“Did you do that on purpose? Answer carefully,” Doug warns.

Otabek lifts a single shoulder a single inch.

“I swear you weren’t this much of a smartass three years ago.” Pausing his tirade, Doug grows thoughtful. He rubs the stubble on his jaw and shakes his head. “Do that again.”

Taken aback, Otabek raises his eyebrows and slowly shuffles back over to the baseline.

“Quit running your mouth and get to it.” Doug adjusts the ball machine and has it fire slow and steady, so he can really see what kind of twisted forehand Otabek has concocted.

Otabek whips his arm. The ball sings off the court, untouchable. Unorthodox. Unforeseen. Admittedly, a complete accident at first.

“Look at the spin on that thing.” Otabek has apparently leveled up in frustration because this time, Doug rubs his forehead. “Go back to hitting a forehand like a sane man, and I’ll...think about this.”

That topspin from his left hand carries Otabek to his first second place trophy on the ITF Junior Circuit, and Doug stops looking testy long enough to take a nice picture for once.

 

Spying isn’t the nicest word for what he and his old bunkmate from camp two years ago are doing, but it may be the most accurate. It may not be the word they use if Coach Doug asks, that’s all.

“Do you understand what they’re saying?” JJ whisper-shouts in Otabek’s ear as they peer through the June-overgrown bush and gaps in the fence at his father, former mixed-doubles champion Alain Leroy coaching a trio of summer-pink Russian kids.

Otabek does. While it may not be as comforting as Kazakh, Russian sounds pleasantly familiar, and he is fluent. Right now, the redheaded girl, Mila, is accusing the black-haired boy called Georgi of stealing her vibration dampener. “It’s my favorite because it’s shaped like a cat! I know you took it!”

“It’s a little piece of rubber,” Georgi says, harassed. “It could be anywhere!”

Too petty a drama to explain to JJ, he decides.

The smallest of them, a blond boy, slides out from behind Alain. Behind his back, in his cupped hands, is a something tiny, orange, and white. A sharp little grin triangles his lips. Edging around, he drops the cat-shaped vibration dampener on top of Georgi’s bag.

_Now_ he has something juicy that he could tell JJ. But Otabek still doesn’t share. Why not, he doesn’t know. Perhaps because it feels all of a sudden like a secret. A secret between himself and this stranger, small enough to fit in a palm.

“Yuri!” Alain calls, and the boy darts to the other end of the court, picking up his abandoned racquet.

Alain hits a tough serve down the line. Otabek would have probably pitched over trying to get it in time. But this boy, this boy flicks off a backhand with careless elegance. Alain rallies, and the boy leads him into a dance, back and forth, forward and back.

Along with an unusual amount of control for his age, the boy displays a certain impatience. An eagerness to finish the point.

Finish it, he does. No sweat. Leaping up, he arcs an easy, easy overhead.

The ball bounces in and then bangs into the back fence, rattling Otabek and JJ’s hiding place. 

Alain huffs a laugh, conceding the point to him. 

Otabek can see the boy’s smirk from across the court.

Elbow digging into his side, JJ exclaims, “Did you see that? Did you see that boy?”

He did see that boy.

Lifting his head, the boy flicks his long, golden hair out of his face. For all the balletic grace of his tennis, the lightness of his feet, his eyes cut sharp, shards of green.

“Yuri,” Otabek says quietly. “That’s his name.”

“Hm?” JJ shifts onto the ball of his foot and cranes around the fence’s join. “Papa’s coming! Go! Hide!” He shoves Otabek down into the bushes.

With as much courtesy as he can manage, Otabek spits out a mouthful of dirt. Yuri, he thinks dreamily. _Yuri._

 

_“You know, Plisetsky is a fan favorite coming into the senior circuit. His fans call themselves Yuri’s Angels--just look for animal print in the stands.”_

_“Oh, Leroy’s fanbase can’t be counted out, either. You can really feel the excitement here at center court...”_

Otabek pauses the video, hits play on his music again, and places his phone on his towel. After four more laps across the pool, he dries his fingers and switches out his music for the clip: a highlights reel from the Wimbledon final that turned men’s tennis upside down.

_”A breadstick and a donut. What an upset!”_

_“There’s ground to make up, but Leroy’s come back from worse.”_

_“Mm. First serve.”_

His shitty internet chops up Plisetsky’s clean follow-throughs, but it’s still worth watching him glide across the court, white slicing up the green. Two aces don’t save JJ that game. Nothing really saves JJ.

_“Beautiful. Just beautiful. Remarkable tennis from a seventeen year old.”_

_“I’d say remarkable tennis from_ anyone.”

For those few not following Plisetsky’s career through juniors, perhaps his excellent performance would feel like a backswing rather than a follow-through. Plisetsky stalks across the court. He serves up impeccable shots. Never once does his head drop.

A tennis match is two battles, only one of which can be televised. One of the body, reaching shots in time and returning them accurately. And one of the mind. Losing the mental war weights the limbs and water-logs the reflexes, and thus the war is lost.

Otabek knows that JJ is good. His match records and fan following show it. But JJ, for all his tournaments and point totals behind him, for all the force of his fanbase lifting him up, has let Plisetsky into his head, and that becomes his downfall.

Plisetsky wins the Wimbledon 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.

Draping himself over the hot concrete lip of the pool, Otabek stares at what is really the snapshot of the season.

In the picture from the podium, JJ clutches his plate over his chest like a shield. With a wicked bright look at the camera, Yuri hoists the base and bites his trophy.

 

“I had hoped that Katsuki was on his way out.”

“Ana,” Otabek says, disapproving. He’s met the man a handful of times, and he’s almost painfully decent.

“He’s competition,” his mother mutters down the line. “Nikiforov coaching him, he won’t be retiring so soon.”

With his wins at Madrid and Rome and consistent progression to at least the quarters at French, his solid baseline game and thorough court coverage, he is competition, yes. Not to mention how Nikiforov’s shaping up his game, leading to marked improvements point-to-point, though no big wins yet. “It was a good semi.”

“Good as in Katsuki must be worn out after five sets with JJ, yes? So he’ll be easy pickings for that Plisetsky boy?”

Otabek’s face flames, caught out. At least he’s alone with his embarrassment. He often uses his Sunday morning off (while Doug goes to church) to ride his bike up the mountain to his favorite lookout spot over the gorge, ochre rock plunging down to churning emerald water. Sometimes he’ll bring a book out here, take pictures to send his friends. He calls his mother here all the time, too--he’ll never claim not to be a creature of habit. “No.”

“Shouldn’t you be unhappy that JJ lost, hmm?” Suppressed laughter in his mother’s voice. “He is your friend.”

Playing with his keys, Otabek returns, “He’s competition.”

Her laughter spills out, and if he imagines hard, he can imagine her shaking her head, freeing the strands of grey at her temples. It’s been fourteen months since he last saw her in person. “I sent you a package,” she says after a moment.

He tries not to think of the cost of international shipping from Almaty, where she scrimps together savings from her job teaching at a university in the city. “I got it.” Otabek allows a smile to creep across his face, and he rubs his thumb over the tiny paw of his new teddy bear keychain.

 

Notwithstanding a near-forfeit in the third set after he squabbled with the chair umpire, 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, 7-6, and Plisetsky sinks his teeth into the US Open cup as well.

 

Karaoke is a _marginally_ smarter idea than getting smashed with a bunch of tennis players before the tournament.

When Giacometti fails to cajole Nekola onto the stage, he begins casting around for another victim.

Marginally.

Otabek, who is defending five hundred points here at Barcelona, is in no hurry to wear himself out tonight, even just his vocal cords. He treads back towards the door, and that’s when he catches a flash of tiger stripes, a flurry of elbows.

“If you like karaoke so much, you sing it yourself, piggy!” Shouting in strident Russian, it’s none other than current ATP first seed, two-time major champion and minor diva, Yuri Plisetsky. He takes two determined steps backwards, trying to push the laughing pair of Katsuki and Nikiforov up the steps instead.

Somewhat surprising to see a coach here, but Otabek supposes Viktor was one of them up until his abrupt retirement the previous year. He’s heard he’s an _unconventional_ coach as well (Otabek doesn’t really know what to make of the insinuation and so goes the safe route of minding his own business).

“A duet! A Yuuri-Yuri duet!” Viktor suggests excitedly, tugging on the two with both hands.

Plisetsky’s head swings around, looking for a way out with a caged animal’s dramatic desperation.

Otabek thinks fast. He cups his hands around his mouth and calls, also in Russian, “Someone left their lights on!”

Green eyes widen and then narrow. With none of his usual economy of movement, Plisetsky untangles himself from their arms and makes a beeline for the exit. “Be right back!” he calls, then pops outside.

“Wait, Yuri--” is all Otabek hears before he slides out the door after Plisetsky.

Plisetsky makes a show of walking up and down the row of parked vehicles before he finally retraces his steps back to Otabek, hands on his hips. A beat. “I came in a taxi,” he admits.

Otabek controls his expression. “I figured, Plisetsky.”

He stares, open-mouthed. “Fuck.” Hands dropping from his hips, he looks between him and the door. “I can’t believe that worked.”

Neither can he. Feeling a little slack-jawed himself, though for different reasons, Otabek gives the suggestion of a shrug.

“Ah, it’s Altin, right?” Plisetsky sticks his hand out. “Thanks for the...rescue. Or whatever.” He glances back at the door, through which they can hear Viktor warbling with gusto.

“More of an intervention.” Otabek returns the handshake in a firm grip, then hesitates. “Otabek.”

Plisetsky blinks. “Yuri,” he offers, more self-conscious than before. Only for that split second. He points down the line. “Tell me that’s your bike.”

He owes Doug double now for allowing him a slicker rental than usual. Boldly, Otabek tells him, “It’s your getaway vehicle.”

 

Cross-legged on the broad stone bridge at Park Guell, Yuri asks, “How did you find this place?”

“Google Maps.”

Yuri scowls.

Otabek leans against the banister a meter removed and gazes out on Barcelona. “I rode around between matches when I played here last year.”

“When you _won_ here last year,” Yuri corrects.

Well. Otabek wasn’t going to belabor the point. He’s better now than he was this time last year. Better than he’s ever been before. After the quarters at the US, he practiced serves in the hundreds until he hiked up his first serve percentage. He’s running around for fewer forehands now, too, on Doug’s reminder that he was trying to wear his opponents out before himself.

“You play a lot of clay tournaments, right?” It seems that unlike Otabek, there’s only so much silence Yuri can stand. Otabek doesn’t mind either way.

He nods.

“I don’t like surfaces so slow,” Yuri says, disgruntled. “I prefer fast points.”

At the Australian Open, Giacometti took Yuri out by the round of 16 and went on to win, and he’s a favorite to win the upcoming French along with Katsuki, so it’s a loaded statement to some degree. “A point is only as fast as your opponent allows.”

Otabek must be a lucky bastard--Yuri only seems amused. “I guess I should thank you for running Leroy into the ground for me. That tool.”

He laces his arms over the banister. “You don’t like him.” That’s uncommon.

Yuri snorts. “He’s a tool.”

“He’s my friend,” Otabek says, more statement of fact than defense.

Yuri stops short. He’s bewildered, not apologetic. “ _Is_ he? But he’s so--and you’re so--”

Otabek’s eyebrows jump up.

“Never mind,” Yuri huffs. “So how did you meet him, anyway?”

“We trained together in Canada,” Otabek explains, “with Alain Leroy.”

Frowning, Yuri tips his head to the side thoughtfully. “I did a summer camp with him once, I think. I don’t know. I went through a lot of coaches before Yakov and Lilia.”

Yakov Feltsman, Otabek recalls. Nikiforov’s former coach, blocky-faced, highly-focused man. Lilia must be new. Should he say he remembers Yuri at camp? Would that be creepy? “I know.”

“You know?” Yuri processes this. “I didn’t see you there.”

“I saw you.” Embarrassed, Otabek clears his throat. “You were good.”

Back-calculating, Yuri screws up his face. “I was ten.”

Otabek meets his eyes evenly. “You were good.”

That, Otabek finds to his fascination, is enough to quiet Yuri.

 

To drown out the buzz of noise in the hotel lobby, Otabek cranks up the volume of the music in his earphones. Packed full of tennis players, the place, as Doug would say, is hopping, and Otabek just wants to unwind after scraping by in his semi against de la Iglesia.

Across the lobby, Nikiforov, Katsuki, Feltsman, and Yuri form a noisy knot.

“You didn’t join the senior circuit to break my racquets!” Feltsman’s yelling at Yuri, who, unaffected, keeps trying to compact his clothes down into his too-small bag. “You represent me, and you represent Russia--”

His mother sent him a GIF of a pissy Yuri chucking down his racquet when he made another unforced error. Otabek can imagine the clattering break of it. She captioned it _your boy?_ and Otabek left it on read.

“Don’t talk to me about representing Russia when Vitya’s coaching a Japanese player--” Yuri shoots back, shaking a metallic jacket at Feltsman.

“Don’t bring Yuuri into this--” Nikiforov cuts into the clamor.

Yuuri puts a quelling hand on Nikiforov’s chest. “Come on, Vitya, enough…”

Hastily, Otabek puts his head back down, reminding himself to mind his own business, though he is far from the only one gawking.

“I needed a new racquet anyway,” Yuri says, loud, hitching his bag up onto his shoulder. “Let’s go already.”

Otabek can’t help but chance a glance up when Yuri stomps imperiously by him.

Yuri meets his eyes and slows. “You’re going to beat Giacometti bloody. Or you’d better.” He gives him a sly smile when Otabek tugs out one earphone. _”Davai.”_

A nonplussed Otabek gives him a thumbs-up.

 

[unknown number] _hey altin. nice work on giacometti. i heard him crying from st petersburg._  
[unknown number] _leroy next._

Otabek pauses the music he’s trying to mix and boggles at his phone.

_Yuri?_

[unknown number] _i got your number from leroy_  
_don’t say anything_

_I was only going to say, I’d rather beat you._

He has to wait longer for a text back this time. Yuri sends him a string of emojis including, but not limited to: tennis ball, fire, angry cat, knife.

_i’d like to see you try._

Otabek’s thumbs hover for a second. _Would you?_

_yeah, could be fun_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everybody! updating sooner than expected because i had some free time. 
> 
> before we go forward, i'd like to make the note that while no archive warnings apply, **homophobia** is a heavy theme in this fic and some content related to that in future chapters could be triggering, so please tread with caution if you think that might be an issue.

Otabek laps the sweat off his philtrum and scuffs the clay at the baseline. Two weeks on, and he has another match point against Giacometti, trying to snatch a thousand ranking points at the Madrid Open.

Drawing his arm back, he tosses the ball high and slams down on the blur of green. His serve lands so thoroughly in no man’s land that the umpire’s “out” is just salt in the wound.

He gathers himself together. Just a serve. He’s up a break, he only has to hold this game. He pulls the racquet back. _Thwack._ Goddamn double fault.

“Deuce.”

And here comes the tug of war.

Up an ad, down an ad. Half the grind of it is in the highs and lows of anticipation and disappointment.

Otabek makes a truly unforgivable series of unforced errors. Grunting and groaning, Giacometti presses every point across the red clay, but Otabek rallies.

At ad again, count lost of how many times he’s been here, Otabek hits a shot that sings and kisses like an angel off the chalk.

His panting breaths freeze up in his chest, but he is not assured of the outcome yet. In a desperate bid to save the championship point, Giacometti challenges. This calls for a consultation with Hawkeye, the now-ubiquitous camera simulation that shows the likely trajectory and landing point of a ball.

The tension winds in his stomach until he wants to throw up. Somehow, this eternity feels even longer than their struggle at deuce. He watches the ball spring up, watches its shadow--

In.

Otabek drags his hands down his face. Elation leaps up his insides. He has wrestled this last game from higher-ranked and better-funded Giacometti, a seasoned player and the former champion here. 

And he has _won._

Through the gaps between his digits, he sees Doug pump his fist and Giacometti shake his head and summon a smile.

 

_congrats on madrid_

Otabek stares at the text for a moment.

He’s just gotten off the phone with his mother, who through happy tears berated him not to rest on his laurels because she was going to use her sick days to come see him at Roland Garros and she wanted to see him _win_.

Throughout the day, friends and family from Kazakhstan, Canada, and America alike have expressed their pride in him. Among those who have sent him congratulations are JJ and Alain Leroy, who he places somewhere warm between friends and family.

Previously, Otabek has only won ATP 500 and 250. After the four majors, each valued at 2000 ranking points, and the World Tour Finals at 1500, the Masters 1000 series tournaments are the most profitable in terms of points and prestige. Otabek would also like to think of Madrid as a turning point in his career, which has been a long process of clawing his way upwards. This win is a big one. 

Nonetheless, he did not anticipate this acknowledgment at all. While Otabek has no enemies on the World Tour, he remains somewhat aloof. His relationships with the other players are courteous and nothing more. These are his peers, not his friends. Only JJ ever messages him post-match.

After their first official meeting in Barcelona, Otabek and Yuri have texted occasionally. They probably only qualify as casual acquaintances at best. So--strange, but not unwelcome.

Somewhere in the midst of this, he remembers his manners and texts back, _Thank you._ After a moment, he adds, _I thought I wouldn’t make it through that last point._

He nearly drops his phone when Yuri calls him.

“Your serve is shit,” Yuri informs Otabek the second he picks up.

Startled, Otabek almost laughs. “It’s a work in progress.”

“That forehand you do--” He hears a series of odd scraping sounds. “Ignore that, Potya’s eating. Anyway, did your coach teach you that?”

“Is Potya your roommate?” Otabek asks in lieu of answering.

“My roommate is a cat.” More scraping, and then quiet. “So? That forehand. I know I couldn’t do it, since I’m not left-handed.”

“So why are you asking, then?” His tone is playful.

“Come _on._ I’m curious. Was it an accident?”

Otabek hums in reply.

“Altin!”

“I’ll never tell.”

“I’m hanging up,” Yuri insists.

“Don’t.” Otabek leans against the counter, cradling his phone. Yuri’s voice is incongruously deep for his narrow figure; he feels it down to his toes. “You should send me pictures of your cat.”

“You could see them on my Instagram, if you had one,” Yuri says pointedly, “or my Twitter. Or my _Facebook.”_

“I have all of those. I just don’t check them.”

“What! Are you some kind of geezer?”

“Sometimes I like to drink coffee and read the paper in the morning,” Otabek says, thoughtful, “so maybe.”

Cat-like, Yuri hisses in disgust.

 

Otabek rolls up his sleeve, idly inspecting the shoreline between sun-brown and winter-pale. He massages his sore biceps a little, wincing. He’s only taking this break on Doug’s insistence, and now he’s feeling every ache he’s been suppressing.

Two weeks until the French Open.

Two _weeks._

Every moment counts.

He swigs a mouthful from his bottle, then splashes water over himself. Shaking off the wet, he dumps his tennis cap back onto his head and bounds back to the baseline.

“Your backhand’s misfiring like my granny’s rifle,” Doug shouts at him from the opposite side of the court. “C’mon. Lighter on your feet.”

Otabek dashes after his ball and hits hard down the middle of the line. His right knee twinges. _Last_ thing he needs.

“Cross-court! Focus, Otabek!” Doug barks.

He tries again, digging in, following through as neat as he can. His whole body’s one big twinge. Has to keep pushing. Has to keep at it.

“Hit left! Your other left! Goddamn it, boy, I’m going grey because of you.”

In a match, he would probably run around some of Doug’s serves to convert backhands into what is by far his best shot, his left-handed forehand. This is not a match. Drilling like this ensures that with those balls he can’t run around to beat down at a match, he can still return the shot.

Breathing hard, Otabek walks it off and tries again. His ball flies wide, soars right over the top of the fence. Otabek’s wound tight, tight enough to snap right down the middle. Still, he springs up on his toes, he rocks side-to-side. Ready position again. There’s nothing to do but get through it.

Doug grabs the ball with his racquet and hits it off the rim. A wonky spin sends it spiraling off, way away from the swing of Otabek’s racquet.

As Otabek cranes his neck to track the ball’s second bounce trajectory, the sky grumbles tremendously. And splits open. Buckets of rain gush down onto their heads.

Summer storms wash the finely-crushed red brick of the court into slippery slick. Now the court’s unplayable.

Hair whisking down his forehead, eyes closed tight against it, Otabek spits out the water that sluices down his lips. His shirt flattens, sodden, to his rising-falling chest. Almost literally, he is drowning in defeat.

“We’ll get back out here crack of dawn tomorrow. No worries.” Doug clasps his shoulder. As gestures of comfort go, it may be too macho to be effective. Then again, that may be the point. “Hey. No worries, son.”

Towing the tarp behind him to spare the court what little precipitation they can, Otabek slogs through the slushy red. His head drops down in the approximation of a nod. No worries.

From behind closed lips, Otabek clenches his teeth so hard that pain hammers up his jaw.

 

Murmurs rise up from the crowd while Otabek straightens, shifts, falls into ready position again.

Here at the French the audience is like an animal of its own. They have strong preferences, and they express them. Otabek has watched enough coverage from previous years to know that while they love JJ and Giacometti with their effortless style and beautiful French, they remain lukewarm towards unassuming, stammering Katsuki no matter how far he goes in the championship--and Otabek with his back-of-the-court, whoever-falls-first clay court game hews far closer to Katsuki.

Today, however, the animal of the audience does not have its hackles raised against Otabek, but against his opponent.

Georgi Popovich is famous-infamous for his time-consuming on-court routines. A mild obsession, a superstition, maybe. Every tennis player either has one or is lying about it. But every tennis player does not spend so many seconds unscrewing and screwing their water bottle or wiping their arms, right-left-right-again. There are accusations of cheating.

As time stretches, Otabek’s patience thins with it. He will wait, he will stick it out until the end of a point, he will pummel a set to its limits. That is, when he’s _playing._ Right now he’s just antsy.

After what seems like an eternity of nervously bouncing the ball and tucking back his hair, plus a scold from the umpire, Popovich finally finds it in himself to serve.

Delays aside, games go fast.

Second round at the French is somewhere they’ve both been before, but there’s a limit to acclimatization. Pressure frenzies the points.

Popovich takes the first set 6-4, but the next two sets are handily Otabek’s.

Otabek’s shot goes long, makes Popovich’s fifteen a thirty. The crowd’s noise picks back up.

He will not have a repeat of New York City. Not here in Paris. This here, this is his surface. Outdoor clay, where he slogs through the dirt, slogs through points. Where he can make it.

So he ups his effort to put on the pressure. After taking Popovich far into the deuce court with a forehand from behind the baseline, he runs up to the net and takes the ball low and quick out of the air. After that, unforced errors riddle Popovich’s half of the scoreboard. 

Psychologically, Popovich easy to shake, and with Otabek’s better tolerance for tiredness, the physical outcome of the match also leans in his favor.

Second match point for Otabek.

The topspin on his final winner, it spins so sweet Popovich can’t do a thing.

On the second bounce, it knocks a ball girl in the face.

Otabek’s exultation at the match’s successful finish evaporates. He panics as medical starts crawling out. Although she cups her nose, the girl waves off the concern.

Pink-faced, Otabek raises an apologetic hand to her and the crowd.

 

“Open your door!” Yuri shouts--doubly, echoing in his ear as well as just outside of Otabek’s hotel room.

Hanging up the phone, Otabek spits out his toothpaste foam in the sink in haste before he goes to answer the door.

Yuri, in head-to-toe black and looking like he stepped out of an editorial, swans past him. Then he flops down on the edge of his bed and surveys his surroundings with scrunched features. “Your room is too clean.”

With as much subtlety as possible, Otabek ducks into the bathroom to finish rinsing out his mouth. “I’m not the one who cleans it.” Yuri’s accusation is one that only dubiously requires a defense, but Otabek does tip the housekeeping staff, so he won’t take the credit.

Scrolling on his phone without looking up, Yuri says, “Still.” He turns his phone around. “I see you updated your Instagram after a decade.”

Otabek’s ears redden. His seemingly hapless victim introduced herself as Stephanie and demanded a selfie. How could he refuse?

“Ball girl basher.” A smile plays around Yuri’s lips in the light of his phone. “Brutal, Otabek.”

Crossing his arms, Otabek leans in his bathroom door. “Should we talk about _your_ vicious streak? Poor Chulanont.” Leave aside that he _likes_ Yuri’s vicious streak.

“Eh. He had it coming.” Yuri drops his phone to the side, careless, and laces his fingers on his stomach. He doesn’t apologize for intruding when Otabek was so clearly getting ready to go to sleep; Otabek, who is intensely private, somehow doesn’t want him to be less invasive. As he’s starting to realize, accepting is simpler than questioning when it comes to Yuri. “So did Georgi! He takes almost as much time between points as you do to update your social media.”

Otabek shrugs at that. “I can understand it,” he says.

“It’s like he’s doing it on purpose!” Yuri seems incredulous that Otabek would defend it.

“I didn’t say I _appreciated_ it,” Otabek reminds him. “All the same, every player has their thing.”

Yuri pauses.

“ _You_ do.” Every game, Yuri has one little something of animal print on him--cheetah laces, zebra tennis grip, snakeskin wristwatch. Flashy, cheesy, totally not Otabek’s style. It’s perfect.

Yuri glares. “The damn Angels took my thing and ran with it! It looks stupid when they copy it.”

“You’re saying you don’t like it when they…” Otabek waits a beat. “Ape you?”

Glare intensifying, Yuri chucks a pillow at him.

Otabek catches it and tucks it underneath his arm. “I have something,” he offers. “Not as good as yours.”

At that, he sits up, eyeing him inquisitively.

Going for his bag, Otabek roots around in the pocket into which he’s tucked his keychain. For a second, he’s struck by shyness. But he pushes past it and pulls out his little lucky teddy bear.

Eager when reaching for it, Yuri’s jarringly gentle when he takes the bear in his hand. “Cute,” he admits, reluctant, as he turns it this way and that in slender, callused fingers.

“My mother bought it for me.” Although it’s his own bed, Otabek hesitates before he perches on the edge. “She says I grew out of my big teddy bear that I had at Juniors.”

Yuri scrutinizes him. “You still have it, don’t you.”

Otabek keeps a straight face. “Of course.”

Swinging his legs over, Yuri gives Otabek room to sit up on the pillows by the headboard beside him. “You saw the draw.” It’s not a question. He’s studying his phone again.

“Yes.” Otabek looks at him. The draw splits the first and second seeds into separate halves so that if they win all their rounds, they will meet in the finals. The setup protects the two best players in the championship from being knocked out by the other until they can make it to the top. Everyone else is randomly sorted into the halves.

“We’re in separate halves.” Yuri’s gaze sparks.

Otabek’s aware. Searingly aware. Yuri is first seed, but Otabek ranks much lower, so it’s sheer luck. Luck is on his side. “If we meet--”

If he meets Yuri at the French Open, it will be at the finals.

“When we meet,” Yuri interrupts, “you’re going down.”

 

Flashes go off in his face, and Otabek squints through them, resisting the urge to shield his gaze. He hates this press shit.

A shower hasn’t made him feel less sticky. Madly, red clay has crept up to the knees of the green shorts he changed into after he left the court.

He wants to get back to his hotel already and buckle down for the semi.

The _semifinals._ At _the French Open._ Nothing but the momentum building under his skin can really make him believe it.

“You’re a favorite to win the title!” one reporter declares excitedly into her mic.

If he’s supposed to respond, he doesn’t know how. Should he thank them for the added pressure? Ask for a source? He just blinks into the cameras.

“Some call you the dark horse of the competition. What do you have to say to that?” another asks with equal exuberance.

“Ah--” Otabek resists the urge to scratch his nape, which suddenly itches with nerves. “I would say, I hope not to disappoint my fans, especially back home in Kazakhstan.”

The noise only picks up after that answer--maybe that means they liked it? He’s truly useless with PR and has little experience beyond the odd local paper and once in his early teens, a radio show.

Doug’s supposed to be fielding his questions, but he doesn’t seem to be much more at ease with it than Otabek. He’s never coached an ATP player who has come this far before. They’re both taking a chance on each other. “All right, folks, one more question, then it’s off to bed with the boy.”

Otabek grimaces slightly. 

Chuckles chase his coach’s words. From the crowd, Doug selects one last reporter to step up to the mic. She shakes back her hair and leans into the mic. “Mr. Altin, who do you consider your biggest competition?”

He ducks closer to his mic as well, albeit with less bloodthirst than she did--they’re really going in on these questions. Clearing his throat, he says, “I consider everyone my competition.”

Doug spares him by sweeping him off immediately afterwards. No doubt he’s in store for an earful from him, and he doesn’t see tennis fans on social media being kind about his non-answer (a problem he will fix by not checking it).

What he really wonders is what Yuri would say.

 

“Out!”

Otabek can’t remember the last time either he or Katsuki actually hit a winner. It’s just unforced errors now, back and forth.

The initial two sets of the semi stretched on into many long games stuck at deuce, Katsuki taking the first set and Otabek prying the second out of his hands. Otabek powered through the third set and won it handily, but in the fourth set, they are both flagging.

The heavy white clouds overhead offer little respite from the heat, instead smothering them under it like a blanket. Black rolls in and out, and rain threatens, never falls. Ball girls and boys have been switched out, shirts have been changed, and stands have been emptied and refilled.

Otabek’s next serve goes wide. He rounds up his arm, shaking slightly, and makes contact with the ball. Goes wide again. He hears Yuri’s voice in his head, snapping at him about his shitty serve. Not that Katsuki has been faring much better: there have been far too many double faults sprinkled in their service games.

This brings them to thirty-all. Pressure has been on, is on, is _on._

Otabek thinks, _Yuri._ There’s only one way to face him tomorrow. He has to bear it out. He has to beat Katsuki.

His next serve is an _ace._

After that, the tide rolls in his favor.

In Katsuki’s next service game, Otabek drives him back to the baseline, makes him go long and wide. This is Katsuki’s strength, too, and he serves up some great points. He has this one winner that whizzes past Otabek, and Otabek can only nod after it. As always, his footwork is intricate. He covers enormous amounts of court in just a few eloquent steps, and it’s a privilege to play him.

Otabek may not have years under his belt. He might not have one of the best tennis players of their time as his coach. Otabek has Katsuki beat at only one element of success. Katsuki wants this, but he doesn’t want this like Otabek does. Otabek has something he doesn’t.

Hunger.

Thirty-forty.

Skidding up close to the next, Otabek skims the ball so, so close. It taps coyly onto the ground just in front of the net. He takes the game.

He’s seized the course of the match. It’s now just a matter of holding onto the reins. Although Katsuki’s rallying bravely as ever, Otabek has this. They hit deuce, and they hover there. Otabek is starved for the win and so, so close. All he has to do is hold this service game, and then he walks off this court and toward Yuri.

Ad Katsuki. Ad Altin, match point. Ad Katsuki. Ad Altin. Match point.

Otabek surges forward. He pops up on the balls of his feet. His shoulder swivels. Feinting, he hits long down the line. Katsuki scrambles for the ball and just manages to get it somewhere in the middle of the court.

Here is his moment. Otabek lunges into it. His forehand soars and thunks into the far corner of the court. It flies out of Katsuki’s reach.

And the match is his.

Fingers digging into his hair, Otabek whips off his sweat-band and just breathes, closing his eyes tight and then opening them wide up to the white sky. Sweat pours down his cheeks, and just before he walks up to the net to shake Katsuki’s hand, a corner of his mouth twitches.

 

“You want money for the jukebox?” JJ leans around the sticky booth, peering at Otabek.

“I have change.” He slides the coins in, one by one, before he meanders back to his seat. Disregarding Otabek’s protests, JJ has bought him dinner _again,_ so he can at least pay for his own music.

JJ works through several expressions as the notes float through the grimy vintage diner that’s their favorite post-practice haunt when they’re on Otabek’s turf. “Jazz?”

Otabek sips his shake. As his mother says when he questions her taste-- _I am large; I contain multitudes._

“You’re branching out,” JJ comments. “Hidden depths.”

He just lifts a shoulder. He’s sixteen, and he’s a closed book. Or something. He likes any kind of music that interests the ears, and he likes it even better when he can get his hands on it and mix it.

JJ laughs at him and shakes his head. “It was good to hit with you again.” Four years after their meeting and a lot of growing up in between, JJ and Otabek are tight as thieves. They keep up a kind of loose correspondence, but most of their contact occurs when they meet up to play together for a week or so at a time. 

With JJ poised to start playing ATP, big plans for the upcoming US Open, there’s a new energy to their training.

“De La Iglesia.” Otabek drums his fingers on the table. “What do you think of him?” Doug isn’t training him, but Otabek’s played with him through spring. Because of the clay courts at the club where they play, Otabek has the chance to hit with all kinds of players (sometimes he bemoans not having the money to employ a permanent hitting partner, but the variety keeps him sharp).

“Well, I hear he’s been fighting with his coach. And have you seen the shampoo he leaves in the bathroom? I looked it up! It’s $75 a bottle! That explains his hair--” JJ glows when he gossips.

“His _game,”_ Otabek corrects, bemused.

JJ pauses in a huge bite of his burger and chews hurriedly. “Oh.” With an unconcerned napkin swipe at his mouth, he gives a Gallic shrug. “I don’t know about that serve of his. Half-hearted.”

Otabek tips his head from side to side. “You think it should be more like yours?”

“No!” JJ sets down his burger and makes an expansive gesture. “Just more style!”

Flatly, Otabek suggests, “JJ style?” If only he knew the beast he was unleashing onto the world.

JJ points at him. “Yes! JJ Style!” Wattage of his smile spiking, he crooks his fingers and throws up a double J.

The memory is a fond one.

 

Toweling off his hair, Otabek glances at his phone again. He has it open to his text thread with Yuri.

The last Yuri sent was a picture of an upset Katsuki with his head buried in Nikiforov’s shoulder. No caption accompanies it.

Otabek isn’t sure how to interpret it. While he’s fairly adept at interpretation in person, and Yuri reads like a picture book, he’s not so good over text. Yuri, he’s gathered, knows Nikiforov very well, and he seems to orbit him and Katsuki at tournaments. They must be close. 

Otabek doesn’t know. Gloating is not his way, and jibes don’t seem appropriate. Whatever the text means, he decides to leave it alone for now.

He slings his towel around his neck and packs his waterproof bag, toting it up from the pool back to his hotel room. 

The morning of his French Open final against Yuri, he jerks awake before his alarm and checks his phone for the time, bleary-eyed. Buried in the flood of good-luck notifications is a text from Yuri.

It’s a picture of a self-satisfied cat, presumably Potya, claws tangled in yarn, and under it, Yuri writes _b/c u asked .. ._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for a scene that could be seen as mild sexual harassment in this chapter (no touching without consent, but verbally suggestive).
> 
> also, made a mild modification for clarity to the last chapter. i'm sorry if these scene jumps are confusing. as i edit, i'm trying to make them more obvious and understandable.

Otabek jogs in place. Keeps his muscles warmed up, ready for the match ahead. By any measure, this match on a clear, sunny day at Roland Garros is the most important of his life so far.

At the net, he looks Yuri right in his hard, green eyes. The eyes of a soldier. Yuri tips his head to the side, narrows those eyes at him.

Forward on his toes to get to his ear, Otabek mutters, _”Davai.”_ He’s there just long enough to see a white-tooth smile steal across Yuri’s face.

Yuri’s serving first. He opens with a showy ace right down the line.

Rolling his neck, Otabek paces over to the other side, takes that fifteen-love. Nothing he can do but fight the points that he _can_ win.

Both Yuri and Otabek, they’re fighters. They’ll take each point to its last. But as far as Otabek’s concerned, Yuri holding with ease just gives Otabek more time to hunker down and get ready.  
So Yuri holds his serve. More surprisingly, Otabek holds his without much trouble as well.

On Otabek’s serve at 4-5, Yuri returns his relatively slow serve unexpectedly short. Otabek scampers up to the net and awkwardly scoops up the ball. Swooping up to the net, Yuri catches the ball in a lovely swing and finishes, picture-perfect, over his shoulder.

That’s love-thirty already.

Playing Yuri is all he imagined. It’s nothing that he could have imagined.

Unlike Otabek, who’s been unflatteringly labeled _bull in a china shop_ as he runs down every point, Yuri’s reach with his long, lean limbs seems effortless. He seems to _glide_ across the court. Yuri’s strokes are better than textbook. That overhead of his, that almost joyous jump into the air contrasted with the ferocity of his assault on the ball--no one can teach that.

Otabek sweats for everything he’s earned. Yuri works hard, too, but Yuri was born for this.

Being enthralled with Yuri is one thing. Handing off the set like it’s nothing is another.

When Otabek serves, Yuri plays it safe with a quick return, not in the center of the court, not far to the edges, either. 

Smart, Otabek muses when he replays this point later. It wouldn’t do to pull up too fast on a ball that mattered that much.

Otabek is in no position to play it safe. He dashes for the ball and smacks it across the court. Yuri all but dances to it, returning it so fast the light blue fabric of Otabek’s shorts blows back against his legs.

Yuri wins the first set 6-4.

Giving ground is not ideal, but it’s no sort of end, not yet. Not even the beginning of the end.

Otabek swallows his water, paces himself. His serve, yes, is a weak spot. It can still pull him through. After all, Yuri only broke him the once.

Over the course of the next set, Otabek can gain no momentum. Yuri’s playing circles around him. While Yuri can’t work the spin off the clay like Otabek can, his strokes are superb and his points are quick, and he wins 7-5.

Otabek’s eyes stray to the drop of sweat rolling off of the tip of Yuri’s nose as they break for water. Focused in the distance, Yuri does not return his glance.

Turning his face front again, Otabek takes a quick but controlled swallow of his water. Back into the match.

Here’s the thing--he can’t _give ground_ in the French Open final. If Yuri’s bringing the fight, he has to hold his ground. The next two games, he grinds it out. Like that proverbial bull, he chases down every single ball. The score’s 1-1.

Yuri runs up after a ball Otabek inadvertently dropped short. He slices, hand flying off the racquet, lithe arm carving out the air. The ball jolts the net and falls back on Yuri’s side. 

Although Yuri spins his racquet, taps it against the clay, he manages not to throw it. Just shakes out his sweat-darkened hair and gets back to the baseline.

After that, Otabek wins the next two points handily. His serve might waver, but he holds his service game.

When it comes to Yuri’s serves, which Yuri attacks with determination, Otabek remembers what Coach Doug is always shouting at him. The best defense is offense. Playing defensive tennis means Otabek’s always on the back foot where he needs to push _forward._

Instead of just running down Yuri’s balls now, he returns them in wild directions, long and wide, short and off to the side and down the middle.

Otabek won’t tire as rapidly as Yuri. He trains for endurance, not elegance. This is how he can win.

He breaks Yuri twice.

Before Otabek really knows it, he’s pocketed one set 6-3 to Yuri’s two.

Fourth set now, and the sun is blazing.

Yuri’s frustration mounts, and so does his fatigue. It shows in his sloppy shots, and the couple balls he let go that he shouldn’t have. He’s trying to finish this, to pull out a win, but Otabek won’t make it so simple for him.

Pulling back hard, Yuri hits a beautiful backhand with a guttural cry. Otabek races to the other side of the court for it. He twists off-balance, he struggles, he makes contact--and the ball flies far, far. Too far?

Otabek challenges. Hawkeye has the proof. Otabek’s ball is in, and Yuri paces behind the baseline, seething.

That missed slice in the third set was the turning point of the match. Unforced errors, and Yuri grows more vocal. His temper’s getting the better of him. Otabek’s not happy to see his new friend falling apart. But it is a competition. 

If Yuri makes waves, all Otabek he has to do is remain a calm sea.

An uncharacteristic double fault hands Yuri’s service game to Otabek. Then he holds, and Yuri holds, too. 

But Yuri wavers. The tension in his limbs shreds his technique.

If Otabek wins, he doesn’t want to win like this. He wants to take home the trophy knowing that they both fought to the end for it.

He finishes with something that isn’t quite a winner, but Yuri stumbles and rhythm off, can’t return the ball. And the set is Otabek’s.

5-7, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Yuri’s never had to play five sets at a Grand Slam before. The exhaustion must be setting in under his skin.

Trooping over to his bench, Otabek sits heavily.

The spectators’ excitement spills over the top. With two sets apiece, it’s anyone’s game going into the fifth set.

Yuri had the match in his hands, and then it slipped through his fingers like so much sand. 

Otabek looks over and sees his handsome brow knotted, his shoulders slouched. He’s freshly eighteen, after all. A bruisable age. While Otabek thought of himself as full-grown already a few years ago--he’d been living away from home for years, mostly making his own decisions and paying his own way--he remembers how it was, that age.

Chugging his water, he looks down at his clay-dirtied shoes. Oddly enough, it’s something he likes about clay. As he marks it, it marks him.

Out of his peripheral vision, he can see Yuri jiggling his leg. Fidgeting with his printed sock.

As Otabek lifts his head again, looks across the benches, their eyes meet.

Yuri’s eyes widen for a moment, then _harden._ Metal striking metal, and a spark jumps between them. Jumps right down to Otabek’s toes. His heart beats hotter.

At the same time, as if they planned it, they both shove to their feet. Eyes still locked, one simultaneous step backwards before Otabek turns around and jogs back to his spot. He hears Yuri’s footsteps retreat, too.

The moment shakes Otabek up. Shakes the match up. It’s the second turning point--after they meet eyes like that, something changes fundamentally. Something _good._

For five games, Otabek holds. His serve quits misfiring. Perhaps the pressure works in his favor. Granted, he doesn’t manage any fancy aces. He doesn’t need to, though. He’s stopped playing that damn defensive tennis. Now Otabek hits his serve and immediately attacks, not giving Yuri the chance to recover if he fails to hit a winner right off Otabek’s serve.

Not that Yuri in general is failing to hit winners. At such a tricky point in the match, he’s not hitting many aces. His serve stays solid, though, and his strokes tighten back up. Even on the receiving end of those shots of his, they’re gorgeous to see. 

Otabek just can’t break Yuri’s serve. 

No matter what happens at the end of this match, Otabek can’t wait to watch the highlights and know he was there in real time. Know he _reached_ some of those near-impossible balls across the net from Yuri Plisetsky and as Coach Doug would say, gave him _hell._

Tennis is not an easy game. While the goal might be straightforward--hit the ball, and hit it within the lines--reaching that goal and making one’s opponent fall short of it in the process is anything but. 

Otabek ekes out every point, every game. Every match he wins seems like a miracle.

Because some dark buried part of him believes he’ll never deserve to stand where he stands, behind the baseline facing down ATP top seeds. Otabek was born without a lick of natural talent. The nowhere country he holds dear in his heart had bigger problems than the financial troubles of a mediocre tennis hopeful. He did it on his own. He struggled and sobbed. He failed and fell down.

Tennis has always asked more of him than he has to give. But with every breath of his body that seems too difficult to take, Otabek loves this game.

Ten games into the last set of his first major final, a match against his greatest inspiration after his mother, unimaginable weight hanging on the coming outcome, and Otabek is having the time of his life.

Playing Yuri is just _fun._ So ten games in, when Otabek’s holding his serve at a measly thirty-all, when Yuri fires off a shot Otabek can’t hope to return, he can’t find it in himself to be unhappy or angry.

Because it’s _that_ stroke. When he was thirteen and itching at the Canadians campers’ curiosity about him, wanting to go back to Almaty where people’s gazes slid past him as one of their own, when he was failing to keep pace with JJ’s quicksilver confidence on the court, when he was calling home for longer and longer--that’s when he saw that stroke. That thoughtless, calculated overhead.

Yuri’s arm arcs with more reach now, and his foot comes off the ground faster. The ball bounces forcefully out of Otabek’s reach. When Otabek stops futilely tracking the ball and looks back at him, Yuri gives that same careless flick of his golden hair.

Although he wasn’t aware of it, Yuri showed Otabek then what tennis could be, and he’s showing him now.

Even if Otabek shouldn’t be standing here behind the baseline waiting to serve on thirty-forty to Yuri Plisetsky, he’s going to make the most of his chance. One day, he’s going to deserve this.

Bringing him up to the net on a short ball, Yuri can’t anticipate Otabek dropping it short as well. Otabek tries an ungainly volley. By some miracle, it makes it over the net and not into the alley. Yuri pushes Otabek back with a longer shot, and Otabek nearly trips over himself running around for a forehand. He’s just getting himself back together when Yuri’s shot whizzes past him.

Yuri has managed the first break of the set.

Otabek’s not having it. By the time Yuri tosses the ball up for his first serve, Otabek’s on it. He tears down the court and hits with all the power he has. Yuri returns it, and they rally back and forth a dozen times, one of their lengthier points so far. Otabek’s hunger clamors inside him. And is sated. Yuri’s shot goes long, and that’s love-fifteen.

Yuri dips his head as he bounces the ball to serve for the second point. Holds it to his racquet. Then he seems to rethink it, pulling back and bouncing it a couple times more. Flyaway hair loosed from his sweat-band by the wind, and while his eyes aren’t visible from here, Otabek can picture them. Green as stones. He serves a speedy ace and, well. Fair enough. Fifteen-all.

The next two points, Otabek attacks with aggression. He makes Yuri dance. Dance up to the net and back to the baseline, to ad court and deuce court, right and left up and down and in a blur of sweat and twinging muscle, Otabek’s up top at forty-fifteen.

Overambitious with his first serve when Otabek’s poised to break back, Yuri makes a fault. His second serve’s much more ready prey than his first.

Right through his body, biceps and thighs, Otabek powers his backhand. In.

He’s brought the set home. Now it’s 6-6, and they’re going into a fifth set tiebreak. For tennis fans, a dream come true.

And Otabek, despite being dunked into the middle of the heat, blood and bone, is a huge tennis fan. If he wanted this to be easy, he would have never made it here.

His feet drum the clay as he drinks his water. He doesn’t even really want this break. He wants to push right through. But it’s getting uncomfortably hot outside, and his body needs the break even if his mind does not.

He can hear Yuri breathing. Labored pants that he’s trying to swallow back.

Otabek doesn’t really try to stop himself from looking over at Yuri this time. His head’s tipped back, and he’s swallowing water, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

His eyes slide to Otabek. Replacing his bottle between his knees, Yuri raises his eyebrows at him. 

Otabek lifts his eyebrows back, high as they can go (a considerable distance).

Amusement darts across Yuri’s face, and Otabek hears a breath that sounds like half a laugh.

Ducking his head, Otabek presses back a smile. It’s all being captured on camera; they are on international television, and there’s gravity to this situation. There’s also a thrill.

If asked during the tiebreak, he couldn’t say how long it lasted. Fifteen minutes? An hour? Otabek’s pumped up on adrenalin; he can barely feel his body anymore. 

That last point, when it comes, it feels metaphysical.

Yuri successfully slices, and with the insane spin on it, it should have been a winner. Hopeless to hit. But Otabek’s reflexes kick in before his more evolved and sensible lobes can. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but his body does.

His forehand makes contact with the most satisfying sound in the world. The ball lands on the opposite side of the court to Yuri, and Yuri can only watch.

Everything feels still for a moment. The court a Monet smear of red. Ears stuffed with cotton. His heartbeat comes back first, and everything else races on its heels.

Otabek chokes on his breath, and he covers his face with his hands, fingertips curling into his hair. Swaying back on his exhausted feet, he turns in place, seeking blindly. When he drops his hands away, he listens, and he looks. 

Past the crowd’s cacophony, the series of waving tawny palms, where he couldn’t let his attention stray before, there is his box. There are Doug and his mother, jumping up and down, mouths open on words he doesn’t need to hear to _feel._

When his mind forms shapes back out of his ecstasy, Otabek’s runs up to the net. 

Yuri’s there, face clear, eyes sparkling. Yuri tips his head to the side.

Otabek reaches him, and Yuri tugs him up against his whip-like body for a second. It’s a hard and one-armed hug. It’s a promise. “You better watch your back, Altin,” Yuri mumbles in his ear. “Your serve is still shit. But--you deserved that win.”

Maybe, Otabek thinks as he pulls back to throw his arms up to the crowd, he did.

 

“Runner-up of the 2018 French Open, Yuri Plisetsky!”

The crowd waits for the woman to finish in both French and English. They don’t wait for much else. Their clapping and screaming rises up past the stadium into the air as Yuri saunters over to the trophy presenters. He shakes the sponsor’s hand and accepts the plate from a former two-time Roland Garros winner.

Walking over, Yuri hoists it high for a moment, lips curved, then brings it down to hold against his chest. His hair, down from its ponytail, blows gently around his face. The cheers don’t let up. 

Fan favorite is an understatement. In the crowd, Otabek sees a sea of leopard and tiger print, and one woman in a lion head.

“Hello, everyone,” Yuri begins, and the crowd screams. His mouth curls, indulgent as an emperor. As he did at the Wimbledon, the US Open, and the scattering of other World Tour titles he’s picked up, Yuri speaks in English (he tells Otabek he can read French adequately, but his accent is so atrocious it’s not worth trying to speak). “I’d like to congratulate Otabek first.” His eyes are intent, voice low.

Otabek’s ears heat. It’s a formality, he reminds himself. He nods in polite acknowledgment.

“I want to extend my congratulations to his mother and his coach, his team, family, friends.” Yuri nods at the noise from the crowd. “It was an amazing match, and I enjoyed it very much, so...thank you to all for making it happen.” He holds his gaze.

Dazed, Otabek looks back at him. It’s a formality. But that last part is laying it on _thick_ for a formality.

Yuri turns back from him to the crowd. “I would like to thank my team: Yakov, Lilia. Thank you to my grandfather for everything he has done for me.” Here he pauses. He looks like he wants to say more, but he swallows it back. “Last, thank you to the fans here at Philippe Chatrier and everywhere around the world.” He points over at Otabek. “Same time next year?” A ripple of laughter from the crowd.

Once the cheering peters a little (albeit not much), the announcer begins again. “Today he has won his first French Open title--Otabek Altin!”

Otabek flushes and tries to remain dignified as he comes forward. He hugs the sponsor, accepts the cup from the player. Later, he won’t remember what they said to him, too swept up in the moment. Cradling the Coupe des Mousquetaires to his chest, he makes his way over to where he’s directed.

It’s his turn to speak. He clears his throat. He’s not good at public speaking, but the one thing on his side is that he does speak more than passable French after his time in Canada, reinforced by his sustained friendship with JJ. “Hello, everyone.” The cheers have a note of pleasant surprise at his choice of language. “Um, first, congratulations to Yuri and his team.”

How much should he say? How much can he get past his throat? “He has...been an inspiration to me, so it is an honor to play against him.” Swallowing, he continues, “I would like to thank my mother and my coach for their belief in me always. Thanks to my fans and friends, ah--here, all over the world, back in Almaty.”

His eyes slide to Yuri, who’s already starting to grin again. Before he can think himself out of it, he returns in English, “And Yuri, it’s a date.” On the cup’s shiny surface, he can see his own reflection, a stupid-happy wash of color.

Praying that he won’t embarrass himself further, he lifts up the cup as the cheers go deafening.

 

“I know I let you make your own decisions, but--”

“Yes.”

“Goddamn it, I won’t hear it this time.”

“Two _days?”_ Otabek frowns at Doug. “Sir?”

“Don’t you ‘sir’ me. We’ll fly back day after tomorrow. You won the French fucking Open, boy, and you are gonna take two days off.” Doug lowers his sunglasses and peers at him. “Or at least I am, so unless you find someone else willing to coach your stubborn ass…”

Perhaps tomorrow Otabek can take his mother to breakfast. Brunch?

 

Brunch was a bad idea. Awake at the accustomed 5:30, Otabek meditates for a while. As in, he stares at the ceiling, utter tedium. Sighing to himself, he rolls over face-first and grabs for his phone off the nightstand.

_i lied_

_your serve wasn’t completely shit. surprisingly_

Timestamp 5:23 AM. 

Seeing as it’s a stunt Yuri’s pulled on him before, Otabek goes ahead and calls him. “You got your slice the second time.”

“It’s not my slice, technically,” Yuri grumbles. He sounds sleep-raspy. He sounds good. “Always those tweets saying I’m just trying to copy Vitya.”

He turns onto his back and draws up his knees. “I didn’t see Nikiforov on that court.”

Yuri pauses, and Otabek can tell he’s pleased. “So are you around for today? Hang out with me. I bet you have leftover champagne. Then you can take me around on whatever rental bike you have. Baba was going on and on about some lunch place, we should check it out. Maybe the markets?”

“I’m spending the day with my mother,” Otabek explains after an apologetic moment. “But--I want to do all of those things.”

“Yeah?” Yuri seems mollified by that.

“With you.” Texting and calling can tide him over, but he remembers how much fun they had hanging out in person. Otabek would like to do everything with Yuri. 

“With who else?” Yuri scoffs. “Anyway, you have to be nice to me after you beat me like that. Five sets! That’s torture.”

“It was fun,” Otabek chips in mildly.

He can all but hear the roll of Yuri’s eyes. “I didn’t say it wasn’t _fun_. But you _will_ be paying for that later.”

Otabek plays with his teddy bear keychain, toys with the key to the rental bike hooked onto it. “Free tonight?”

“For what?” Yuri asks with suspicion. “It better be good.”

“JJ is having a pool party at his hotel.” Otabek isn’t really attached to the idea. “We don’t have to go.”

“Good,” Yuri says plainly, “because we’re not going.”

“What should we do instead?” Otabek asks.

“I’ll think of something. Taking your bike around at night. Or we could go to a club. I turned eighteen in March, so.” Muffled thumps and shouts from Yuri’s end. “Hang on, Yakov is here. Call me after breakfast with your mother. She’s very pretty, you know? You look like her. Okay, okay, I’m coming, don’t knock down the door!” Yuri hangs up before Otabek can reply to any of that, probably because he already knows that Otabek will be sure to call.

 

His mother cuts her croissant up into near-geometric pieces. They’re steadily making their way through a late breakfast before they visit the Louvre around midday. “Evgenia is making good progress on her research.”

Otabek nods. “Lauren told me.” Evgenia, his mother’s grad student, is a good friend of Otabek’s. She just so happens to be long-distance-dating Lauren, another friend of Otabek’s that she met through him, 67a bike mechanic who works wonders on Otabek’s machine.

“How is Lauren? Does she still have better hair than you?” His mother sips her coffee.

He pulls a face and declines to answer.

“Come to Almaty soon. Your friends aren’t getting into enough trouble without you.”

“This summer.” Otabek has planned on a visit, and now that he has won a major, he might feel less guilty about taking the time off training. Might.

“You’re still in that Skype group with them?” Periodically, his friends will add his mother to it, and he’ll hastily remove her again. “Have you added your Yuri?”

He’s been hoping she wouldn’t mention Yuri. But then she wouldn’t be his mother.

He shakes his head no. He hasn’t added Yuri. 

Otabek is not covetous, except that he is. When Yuri talks to him, he spills out all his words like he’s been storing them drop by drop for Otabek all this time--he’s not ready to share that yet.

“Hm. Speaking of that Plisetsky boy...you played beautifully yesterday. More beautifully than he did,” she claims, and Otabek knows better than to argue with his mother. Reaching across the table, she takes his hand. “You know I’m proud of you, yes?”

A small smile. “I had no idea.” He squeezes her fingers. “Ted helped.”

“Ah! I told you. Not that I’m superstitious,” she says superciliously. “as a woman of science.”

His mother’s razor-sharp intelligence has not passed down to Otabek, at least when it comes to science. He never could follow along with her physics lectures.

They bonded most when she took him out to hit on the university’s tennis courts on weekends. She played tennis as a teenager and to this day watches the sport even more religiously than Otabek does; she has kept a finger on the pulse of his game since he was a boy and knows it like her own heartbeat.

Otabek rubs his thumb over a smear of pen on the back of her hand. “I love you, Ana. Thank you for coming.”

“Lucky you won and I didn’t waste a flight.” She blows across her coffee and sighs, “I love you, Otabek.”

 

“I can’t believe you talked me into coming.”

Otabek didn’t talk him into anything. After they happened to ride by JJ’s hotel, Yuri was the one to reconsider his invitation. Otabek elects not to point that out. 

Dismounting his bike, Otabek leads the way into the hotel.

Pool lit up shimmery, various tennis players lounge around on the deck chairs. De la Iglesia chats with Giacometti, and Otabek nods to him. He and Leo haven’t been in regular contact since they trained together in their teens, but he is a friendly face.

“O!” Otabek accepts JJ’s nickname as well as his tackle and squeezes his shoulder. Pulling back, JJ adjusts his arm around his fiancée. “Isabella loves Paris--” _Pah-ree,_ he stretches, exaggerating it, despite speaking in English. “So we are staying one extra night.”

Isabella elbows him. “JJ loves Paris,” she corrects.

Yuri’s eyes move between them, then to Otabek. He’s close behind him. A day with him riding on the back of his bike, and feeling his body heat against his back hasn’t gotten old yet. “I’m going to go sit somewhere away from everybody else,” he mutters (rudely) in Russian. “Bring me a drink.” _Everybody else_ excluding Otabek, apparently.

Otabek nods and suppresses a shiver when Yuri brushes past him.

“So? How’s it feel, your first Grand Slam win?” JJ smiles fondly. “I remember mine.”

The first time JJ made it to the finals of a major, it was at the 2015 Australian Open, and he was runner-up to Nikiforov. Six months later, JJ won the Wimbledon. 

After a long moment of contemplation, encapsulating all he feels about finally facing Yuri and emerging the victor as well as the soaring satisfaction of notching a major, the payoff, the promise of a brighter future--Otabek says, “Good.”

JJ snorts. “Always with the understatement! You should party!”

“I am partying,” Otabek says dryly, and Isabella’s eyes twinkle at him over JJ’s shoulder. Looking past her, he sees Yuri jerk his head at him, impatient. “I’m going to get a drink.”

JJ shoves a glass at him, the drink splashing over the edges.

Otabek squints at the blue concoction with a fruit spear rolling around its rim. By the time he looks up, JJ has diverted his path to harass Nikiforov and Katsuki instead. So he goes ahead and picks his way across the increasingly raucous party, dodging congratulations, to deliver it to Yuri.

“What is _this?”_ Yuri sounds outraged. Otabek doesn’t buy it. Yuri takes a sip, then wets his lips. “It’s not the worst. Maybe your taste is redeemable.”

Otabek debates it for a second, then offers, “It’s actually JJ’s taste.”

Yuri sets down the glass with a clink, and Otabek tries not to laugh.

The music changes, and Otabek studies the people splashing in the pool all the more studiously when he recognizes the new song as one of his mixes. He could wish for JJ not to mention it. But that would be a wish wasted. He’s grateful enough that JJ has left him to his quiet corner.

“This is a mix made by this year’s French Open winner!” JJ yells over the clamor, and everyone cheers, looking over at him. Giacometti’s regard is particularly speculative.

Yuri’s eyes grow gratifyingly round. “You made this? You make mixes?” he demands.

“Sometimes.” Otabek steals Yuri’s drink and takes a sip. More alcohol in it than he expected. Doused in sweet, but definitely vodka.

“You make _sick_ mixes. Fucking hell, Ota _bek.”_ He cuts his name in half in his incredulity. “That’s awesome.”

Otabek sips more of Yuri’s drink. “I like doing it,” he says with indifference, though his heart flips over with happiness. 

Yuri noodles himself all over his pool chair, tipping his head back. His knee taps off of Otabek’s. “What do they have to party about? _They_ weren’t finalists.”

“Smug doesn’t suit you.” That’s a lie. It fits him just as well as his tight jeans and rolled-up shirt sleeves.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re _such_ a bad liar?” Yuri smirks. “Weird for someone with such a good poker face.”

When Yuri slumps back, his shirt rides up and exposes the waistband of his swim trunks. Apparently he was prepared for the pool in spite of his protests. With half the male players shirtless, what’s a small stretch of white skin scattered with blond hair? Nothing, Otabek tries to tell himself. 

Distracted as such, Otabek doesn’t notice Giacometti headed his way until the end of his chair depresses.

“That was an excellent match you two played today.” Stretching, Giacometti winks at him. “And what a _finish!”_

Otabek doesn’t like the way he purrs--or more accurately, _slurs_ \--that last part.

“I always say…” Otabek wishes he wouldn’t say anything. “A good tennis match is like sex.” He wishes, in particular, that he wouldn’t say that. Giacometti’s comments give his near-orgasmic on-court grunts an uncomfortable new context. “It’s a lucky man who gets to play mixed doubles with a beautiful woman.” 

Mixed doubles. Sure. Otabek drinks Yuri’s drink for something to do with his hands other than plastering them over Giacometti’s mouth.

Giacometti, spotty stubble popping at this proximity, asks, “You have a motorcycle, don’t you?” His breath reeks of alcohol. “The ladies must love that. You know, I could--”

“It’s a rental.” Otabek could use that getaway vehicle about now.

From across the party, JJ’s laughing at the tableau, drunken Giacometti swaying into his space, Otabek trying to go so rigid he won’t have to lean back for Giacometti to take the hint. While it’s an awkward situation, it makes Otabek even more uncomfortable that he doesn’t know the reason for JJ’s laughter. Is it because it’s Otabek, because it’s Giacometti, because they are both men? Everything about this makes him uncomfortable.

Strolling back over, Yuri gives Giacometti a look like something he scraped off the bottom of his shoe and is about to set on fire. “You’re in my spot.” His nostrils flare. “Otabek, go get me another drink,” he orders, “since you drank half of mine. But I’m cutting you off. You have to take me back to my hotel, remember.”

By the time Otabek returns with Yuri’s drink, this time something alarm-red with three cherries bobbing in it, Giacometti has made himself scarce with grace, more or less. More surprisingly, he has not been reduced to a scorched spot on the ground.

Absurdly grateful for the save, Otabek hands over Yuri’s drink and reclines back on his half of the chair. _“Bossy.”_

“Yeah, well, you listened to me, so what does that make you?” Yuri retorts. Yuri slams back half his drink and then passes it back to Otabek. Hands freed, Yuri tugs off his shirt and tosses it onto the chair. “Going swimming.”

Otabek stares at the muscle of Yuri’s back under skin pearly with moonlight. Belatedly, he responds, “A very smart man.”

Yuri’s answering snicker is cut off by his cannonball into the water. Stroking across the pool, Yuri shakes out his wet hair with a curled-lip look at Katsuki perched on the tiled rim.

Carefully, Otabek avoids looking at JJ again.

Otabek is sunk, sunk, sunk.


	4. Chapter 4

“Since I was twelve and he was thirteen.” Otabek cuts the sandwich on a diagonal and passes the plate over to Isabella.

“So what, you’ve known JJ for four years now?” Isabella smiles. “So you would say you know him well.”

Otabek senses where this conversation is leading and preempts it. “He’s serious about you.”

Isabella swallows her bite of sandwich and blinks at him. “You think so?” Understandably for someone who’s never faced him down in a third set, she doesn’t seem to think JJ is serious about anything.

Their Saturday practice was a half-day because Alain had some business to attend to after lunch, so JJ planned an afternoon date. Last minute, he’d run out to go bring her a bouquet of flowers. Unfortunately, that was just when Isabella showed up to his house, where Otabek was staying for the week.

So here they are.

“I don’t hear the end of it.” Subtle as he can, Otabek glances at the door. He can talk up his best friend as much as possible, but he can’t do much to stop him from seeming flaky.

“He’s funny,” Isabella admits, blush high on her cheeks, “and sweet.” A year older than JJ, she goes to school with him but only met him (inadvertently) through Otabek.

_Sweet_ is an understatement. Under his bluster and foibles, JJ is all heart. Quietly, Otabek says, “Give him a chance.” 

Thunder booms outside.

JJ and Isabella’s first meeting, after all, was all about chance. A month ago, Isabella came into the comic book shop where Michael, the boy Otabek hangs out with sometimes when he comes to visit JJ, works. She and Michael had some history project to do together, which Michael was completely neglecting in favor of chattering to Otabek about Josie and the Pussycats.

That’s when JJ came to pick Otabek up.

Soon, Michael, history project, and Otabek long forgotten, Isabella and JJ only had eyes for each other. At the time, Otabek mainly felt relief that it took the scrutiny off of him and Michael, who JJ knew as an acquaintance of Otabek’s and nothing more.

Now he realizes that unlike with every other girl JJ insists he’ll marry, he’s truly besotted with Isabella. Otabek also approves of the match. Isabella is optimistic, smart, and supportive of JJ while also able to slap him around when he needs it. 

He’s _willing_ JJ not to mess this one up.

“Where did you say he was again?” Isabella asks over the rain drumming on the windows.

Otabek didn’t actually say. He thought JJ would like the flowers to be a surprise. At a flurry of knocks, Otabek scrambles upright. Of course JJ forgot his keys as well. Racing to the door, he throws it open.

On the other side is a sheepish, soaked JJ. He’s clutching a bouquet of raindrop-crowned lilies.

“What’s going on?” Isabella calls from the kitchen.

JJ makes a cutting motion across his throat and practically throws the bouquet at Otabek, then shambles, sopping, off to his room.

“Ah, nothing.” Otabek has to buy JJ some time, so he hides the flowers behind the coatrack and wanders back to the kitchen. “So you said you wanted to major in anthropology?”

Rattles, bangs, and in two minutes flat, JJ skids into the room in dry slacks and shirt, bouquet of flowers held out to Isabella.

Isabella gasps. “Oh! They’re beautiful.” Taking the lilies, she leans in to peck JJ’s cheek.

“It’s raining, so we can’t go to the park after all.” His beam dims.

“We’ll go somewhere in my car. Okay?” She gives him another comforting kiss on the cheek, then loops her arm through his and drags him towards the door. “Thank you for the lunch, Otabek! And the advice!”

“What advice? What did you say?” JJ asks worriedly, and Otabek just shakes his head at him as Isabella leads him towards the door.

“Your hair's still wet,” Isabella tells JJ, knowing. “You should get it cut like Otabek’s. It would look good on you.”

“His haircut was my idea--” Otabek hears JJ protest before the door slams behind them.

Otabek thinks they’ll be all right.

 

“This lighting makes me look terrible,” Yuri complains. He adjusts his laptop screen again, and Otabek looks away. 

The jiggling of the webcam image makes him dizzy. Perhaps ironic for someone whose career consists of following a green ball with his eyes.

“It doesn’t.” Otabek hooks his finger in a wonky, loose string and drags it halfway across the radius of his racquet. Past time to restring--snapping a string in practice told him that already.

“You’re not even looking!”

“I don’t need to look.” To placate him, Otabek does look up. 

Yuri’s toweling his shoulder-length hair after a shower. When he stands to drop the towel somewhere, Otabek can see a maddening peek of tiger stripe. Top of his boxers showing over his low joggers. 

He _really_ didn’t need to look.

“You mean I always look terrible?” Yuri sits, fluffing his hair, scowling.

“Yes,” Otabek deadpans. “That’s exactly what I meant.” 

Half an hour ago, Yuri texted him _add y.plstsky17. skype call in 6,_ and Otabek did as he was told.

A week and change since Roland Garros, and the Wimbledon is coming up at breakneck speed. As training picks up, texts back and forth become more sporadic. 

That Yuri wants them to start video-calling now must mean he wants to talk to Otabek more. Misses him, if Otabek could be so bold. Good that it’s mutual. Otabek is _not_ going to mention the pathetic number of times he’s checked his texts and even Twitter and Instagram for signs of life.

“I see you liked my picture of Potya.” 

Otabek did. Under the prettily-lit picture of the cat, the caption #nomakeup #nofilter almost made him sputter out his water at practice (Doug gave him a helpfully bruising thump on the back). 

“You want to see her?”

Wait. “You have a _female_ cat named Potya?” For a second, Otabek stops wriggling the strings out of his racquet. It _is_ 2018, he can hear Lauren, who is butcher than he is, saying in his head.

Yuri, unexpectedly and enjoyably, turns bright red. He ducks, and his desk muffles him as he says, “It’s a nickname.” He comes up again with an armful of fluffy ragdoll cat, who stares at Otabek through the screen, eyes sulky sapphires.

Otabek studies the cat as he waits to hear her full name. “She’s cute,” he offers honestly when Yuri yields no further information,

Face screwed up, Yuri strokes her fur with slender fingers. “I’ve had her since I was a kid,” he begins, defensive.

In response, Otabek just nods. He’s not really into pressuring people to reveal information they want to keep to themselves. Yuri’s doing that thing where he works himself up into saying what he really wants to say, that’s all.

“Her name…” Yuri looks down at the cat, and the cat looks up at him. “It’s…Don’t laugh.” He breathes in, then talks so fast the words smear together. “Puma Tiger Scorpion.” Finishing, he covers his face.

“Puma Tiger Scorpion?” repeats Otabek. _Puma Tiger Scorpion._ It’s so very Yuri. He _loves_ it. When Yuri’s hands don’t move, he says aloud, “I love it.”

Yuri peeks through his fingers. “I want you to meet her,” he says when he’s satisfied with what he sees on Otabek’s face. At last, he drops his hands back to her fur.

Right now, everything with Yuri is so easy that he cannot bring himself to think about how hard this could be. 

“I want to meet her, too.” Otabek sets down his racquet and rests his chin in his palm. “Puma Tiger Scorpion, first of her name.”

Puma Tiger Scorpion sneezes, and the wrinkle of Yuri’s nose in response makes Otabek’s week.

 

There’s no room in Otabek to resent Chulanont. 

As much as Otabek tried to avoid hitting the ball to his left, one can only do so much in gameplay. Chulanont’s backhand utterly destroyed him. Not to mention his much-improved endurance (he’ll be eagerly pressed in interviews for his training regimen, no doubt).

Chulanont, too, comes from somewhere without as much international athletic credit behind its name as his competitors’, struggling to find fame for his homeland. Tennis may be considered a solo sport for people like Yuri or de la Iglesia, whose countries have had years of tennis success, but there’s more riding on individual wins for people like Chulanont and Otabek. 

So Otabek does wish him the best of luck in the rest of the tournament.

“Chulanont played the tennis of his life,” he repeats. It’s what Doug said, what his mother and Evgenia told him over the phone. Otabek, of course, still blames himself for the loss. 

 

On the balcony jutting out from Yuri’s hotel room.

Yuri kicks his foot up against the twisted metal bars of the railing while Otabek listens with his arms crossed over it. “Chulanont was _possessed._ I’ve never seen him play like that. Demon in him.” A strand of blond comes free from his bun, and he tucks it behind his ear with more force than necessary.

“Maybe that demon could visit me next.” To be out in the quarters isn’t the end of the world, but Otabek hoped to make it further at the Wimbledon this year.

Yuri jabs him in the side with his elbow, just beneath his ribs. “You don’t need a fucking demon. Okay? So stop that. You played well.”

Otabek resists the urge to rub the tender spot. “That’s why you’re trying to injure me? Take out a threat for the rest of the season?” 

“I want you to stay _in,_ ” Yuri disagrees. “I want to see you in New York and not Leroy. Bad enough I have to play him tomorrow.”

Deciding to disregard the periodic dig at JJ, Otabek notes, “It will be interesting to see Katsuki play Chulanont. They trained together.” It’s not nosiness if it’s tennis trivia, his mother explains sagely to him.

“Katsuki might cry about it.” The thought, however, does not seem to cheer Yuri. “You’re leaving now? You won’t stay for the semis?”

“I need to train,” Otabek says, stoic. He needs to do better.

To his relief, Yuri only nods. He understands this game doesn’t allow for gaps. “Good luck. Work hard.” Toes tucked under the metal rail, he sneaks a glance at Otabek that makes his breath twist. “You’ll watch me, then,” he murmurs, “and we’ll Skype later.”

Otabek nods back. Like he has to ask. 

Under the magnifying glass of men’s tennis, Yuri should mean little more to him than particularly voracious competition.

They steal every second together up until Otabek has to check out.

 

On his phone in the line for immigration, Otabek watches a pre-semi press interview.

“For both of you, who is your biggest competition?” The question is a favorite.

Yuri dips forward to the mic first with a roll of shoulders that have broadened noticeably since his last Wimbledon, muscle thickening as he edges out of adolescence. He answers, “Myself.”

Scattered laughter from the press, and cameras flash white squares.

The video pans to JJ, who has his arms folded behind his head, grinning like he’s having the time of his life. Which he might be. He and Yuri soak in the attention; Otabek never could. “I would have to say my biggest competition is _also_ Yuri Plisetsky.”

From the side, Yuri’s scoff is audible, and the foldout table rocks as they both push back from it.

Otabek leans his cheek on the handle of his bag, watching the still of their blurred waving hands and faces fondly. Before he pockets his phone and palms his passport, he saves the video in a tab.

 

The groupchat is full of Twitter screencaps. Otabek scrolls down, puzzled, catching his name and Yuri’s a few times.

michael ~sucks superman's dick~  
 _@so-sotabek you want to explain why your newest biggest rival is defending u on twitter??_

lauribear  
 _it’s cute imo_

michael ~sucks superman's dick~  
 _??? y r they even attacking bex rn_

zhenya xox  
 _he’s making a bigger mess for him. plisetsky should leave it be_

lauribear  
 _what, you people wouldn’t defend our boy_

king jj the king  
 _umm i would die for otabek!_

Otabek calls JJ. “I’m lost.”

“O, have you ever even heard of the internet?” He imagines JJ shaking his head in exasperation. Surely Otabek can’t count as a Luddite with a popping group-chat. “Some journalist tweeted something about you being a ‘one-hit wonder,’ like your success would be limited only to that one French Open or to clay.”

Otabek ponders that. He’d like to take home more than one Coupe des Mousquetaires, certainly, but to be pegged as a clay specialist wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. “And Yuri…? Hang on.” His phone vibrates against his ear as Yuri texts him repeatedly.

_What are you doing?_ he asks fast.

_call me eee_

He hates this, the social media, media circus of all of it. “Call you back.” Hanging up with JJ, he calls Yuri just as he opens up Twitter. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the damn fucking...Yuri’s Angels,” Yuri spits like a curse. “Some idiot at the Daily Whatever made a passing comment about how you were never going to amount to anything, and for some reason my ‘fans’ jumped all over that. They’re mad at you for beating me at the French and now they’re just being shitty. I hate them.”

Alarmed, Otabek says, “It’s--not a big deal, Yuri.” 

Yuri Plistesky @yuri-plisetskyofficial  
i doubt many of you have picked up a racquet in your lives but as someone who HAS and has played otabek altin

Yuri Plisetsky @yuri-plisetskyofficial  
i can tell you that he is a hell of a player and deserves all his wins and none of this hate   
Scrolling a little, Otabek sees some of the replies to Yuri’s tweets. Some third contingent, maybe JJ Girls, are firing back at Yuri for no reason. His hand tightens on his mouse. “People are calling you _slurs,_ Yura. It’s not worth it.”

“What, ‘fairy’? Who cares?” Yuri says impatiently. “I get called that all the time. It doesn’t matter.”

Fury boils up into his throat. “Of course it matters! It matters to me.”

“And this matters to _me._ ” For a tense moment, all that is audible on the line is Yuri’s hard breathing.

Otabek rubs his forehead, winces. Yuri going off on his fans will make more trouble for them in the future. Not necessary, not helpful. “You can’t do this again.”

“You can’t ask me not to defend you.” Yuri is vehement.

“Please,” Otabek says softly.

Down the line, more silence before Yuri gives a shaky sigh. “I just can’t believe it’s people who think they’re my fans and they’re doing me a favor who said all that stuff about you. I mean-- _I’m_ your fan. Or whatever.”

With completely put-on confidence, Otabek slides in, “I’m your fan, too.”

“Um, of course you are.” Yuri sounds a little breathless, though, so Otabek doesn’t feel quite so stupid. “Not one of the annoying ones, though. You’re not going to copy my style and stuff. You better not.”

“You don’t think zebra stripes would suit me?”

“No!”

“Well, you know--”

“Don’t,” warns Yuri.

Lucky Yuri isn’t here, or he might not be able to keep the shit-eating grin off his face. “Monkey see, monkey do.”

“I’ve never worn _monkey_ print! It isn’t even a thing! You’re an ass!” Seems they’ve smoothed things over, at least for the moment.

 

Having accidentally seen spoilers of Yuri and JJ’s match (A win for Yuri, though not as devastating for JJ as the previous year’s, a respectable 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4), Otabek at least resolves to dodge the news like hell until he can watch the Yuri vs Yuuri final in full.

Not to mention that he’s also dodging anything from the outside world due to potential fallout from that social media mess. They haven’t talked much since then, but Otabek knows they’re okay because Yuri texted him an absurd amount of Puma Tiger Scorpion pictures his cat-sitter took. Yuri hasn’t said one premature word about the match’s results to Otabek, though. After all, he said _watch me._

Post-practice that day, Otabek’s muscles feel tenderized as meat. Princess and the Pea-esque, he settles into bed and then flinches. Ah. He fishes out a book from the middle of his bed and replaces it on his nightstand.

Usually after a long day of training, he’ll attempt to read. He never gets past ten pages. Weekends are when he powers through books.

The snuggle of blankets at his back and the drum of summer rain on the roof threaten to lull him off to sleep today. As soon as he powers up his laptop and starts the match, though, his tiredness drains away.

Otabek questioned Yuri on how he would work animal print into his Wimbledon tennis outfit, which was required to be white. He shouldn’t have worried.

When Yuri turns his head to wipe his forehead on his sleeve after a service fault, his visor glints in the sun, and Otabek sees that it’s printed with silver leopard spots. Snow leopard will be Yuri’s claim if Otabek asks, he guesses, and he would rather hear it from him than the commentators he almost has to mute for finding inexplicable mirth in Yuri wearing this visor and shorts apparently a hint too short and high above the knee.

Katsuki, dressed far more traditionally, looks ill at ease. Nervous, kicking his toes behind the baseline and glancing up at the stands.

Otabek’s never enjoyed looking up to the audience--he can hear them and that affects his game badly enough anyway, and Doug’s always advised him not to look to even glance at his player’s box, as they can get in his head too. 

On the other hand, JJ always looks up to see his friends, family, and team. He once whined to Otabek about Alain getting on his case for blowing a kiss to Isabella during a match, then pouted audibly when Otabek agreed with his father’s assessment.

It’s clear dividing his attention distracts Katsuki. Nikiforov always seems cool on the court, but the few times Otabek’s been in his proximity off of it, he finds him to be mercurial, occasionally cruel. Yuri complains often of how wrapped up coach and student are in each other, and Otabek’s still curious about karaoke night.

Whatever’s going on, it’s screwing with Katsuki’s shots. His footwork stays perfect. One foot over the other, the full realization of the supposed benefits of the novice ladder drill. Otabek still doesn’t understand how he can get so much court coverage with his height. But his strokes are sloppy. Katsuki winces, mouths damnations to himself as he makes unforced error after unforced error.

Yuri paces back and forth a few steps behind the baseline. He squints across the net, and the commentators make a note that Yuri’s game is on the downward slide, too. If a competitor isn’t at the top of their game, the player doesn’t have to jump to reach them. Yuri’s almost lazy about all of it, and why not? Katsuki’s handing him points. 

The first set goes to Yuri, but it could almost be an accident. Otabek hopes for better in the next set. In his head, he eggs Yuri on silently. Something has to light the fire for him.

That something turns out to be a loose-armed shot from Yuri that goes wide. Yuri purses his mouth at it like an old woman. And then the Plisetsky genius of last year’s Wimbledon creeps back into the match.

A pretty, pretty forehand that gets replayed, and Otabek can’t wait to see in GIF form. Picture-perfect volleys that bring Katsuki up to the net like a minnow. That Otabek can count, five aces.

Three handy sets, and Yuri wins his second Wimbledon.

Pulling off his wristbands, Yuri slingshots them into the crowd. He must like his Angels more than he claims. The sight of Yuri’s lit-up face is a balm for Otabek’s exhausted eyes. 

It’s long past time that he should be asleep so he can be up for practice the next morning, but he badly wants to watch the trophy ceremony.

On the other side of the net, Katsuki’s eyes are closed. Pallor to his face, and tremulousness in his limbs. Is he sick? He trips up to the net to Yuri, handshake turning into a hug. When they pull back from it, Yuri’s frowning, concerned, too with whatever’s going on with Katsuki.

“Viktor,” Katsuki says, loud enough to be picked up, tearful. Then he’s running across the court, and he’s running into the box. Grabbing seven-time Grand Slam champion, two-time Olympic medalist, and his coach for the past year Viktor Nikiforov by the collar in front of an audience of thousands and the entire tennis world, expression impassioned, he kisses him.

“Oh my,” the female commentator murmurs.

The second commentator laughs awkwardly. “Always with the shock value, these two.”

_Always with the shock value._ The shock value. Is that what two men kissing is? Otabek knows with their coach and student status, with them both being high-profile players, and this being a relatively inappropriate setting for it, it’s about more than two men kissing. But then again, it’s always about two men kissing.

He has to pause the video and take a moment. He looks across the room at his bag on the dresser. At Ted hanging off his zipper. His mother, whispering into his hair that she wished her little boy wasn’t always going against the world.

When Otabek brings himself to hit play again, they first show Yuri’s face. Blanched under his summer tan, his mouth is a flat pink line.

This was Yuri’s moment, and listening to the commentators, Otabek can already tell that only a small percentage of witnesses to it will remember that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lovely anon sent me [this beautiful fanart](http://2-weird-4.tumblr.com/post/163300959391/hi-here-is-a-little-gift-oh-my-god-oh-my) of yuri! i was so beyond thrilled, so thanks to them again for the wonderful surprise. no one's ever drawn me fanart before.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm going to warn again that there is heavy homophobia ahead.
> 
> my lovely anon artist drew me [this adorable art](https://68.media.tumblr.com/51bb905772533056139a6ea66fcd90ac/tumblr_otrrwx6Ndj1vxmme3o1_1280.jpg) of otabek! i love it so much!

“Yuri, it’s Otabek.” He’s not picking up at all, so Otabek’s leaving him the least stilted and most straightforward message possible. He hopes. “Call if you want to talk. Or if you don’t want to talk--we can watch a movie.” He looks down at his feet and taps his toes once before he finishes, “Whatever you want, Yura.”

Yuri calls.

Picking up on the first ring, Otabek waits for him to speak first.

“I’m watching Hell’s Kitchen,” Yuri starts testily. “Keep your mouth shut and you can join me. But I won’t put on pants.”

“Screen-share?”

“Mm.” In the small box in the corner of Otabek’s screen, his hair’s falling around his face a little greasily, and he has Puma Tiger Scorpion cozied up to him as he lies on his stomach in bed. “‘It’s fucking raw!’” Yuri tries to parrot Ramsay with his own Russian-flavored English, grinning and shaking his head at his own attempt.

“Am I allowed to talk?” Otabek asks solemnly.

Yuri groans. “Shut up. Yes.”

Otabek pauses. “Which one is it?”

“Yes. Talk, yes.” Yuri waves his hand at him. 

“‘It’s like Gandhi’s sandal!’” At Otabek’s marginally more successful try, the corners of Yuri’s eyes crinkle. Chin in palm, Otabek looks more at the webcam video than the episode playing.

“If I was a celebrity chef, I would be like Gordon Ramsay,” Yuri muses.

“Really?” Otabek half-shrugs. “I see myself as Rachel Ray.”

Yuri snorts. “Can you even cook?”

“I’ve cooked for myself for years,” Otabek tells him.

“But are you _good_ at it?”

“Few complaints.” Even from Otabek’s mother. Who can’t cook but does love to eat. Doug is easily bribable with Otabek’s dishes as well.

“You might want to hold off on that claim to fame until I’ve tried your cooking.” Yuri’s mouth gives that wicked curl. “I’m sure I could come up with many complaints.”

Otabek cocks a brow. He’s sure he could. But. “Can _you_ cook?”

“That’s...not relevant,” claims Yuri, who has an abruptly renewed interest in watching the video.

Otabek watches for a while without talking as well.

Fed up, Yuri exits the video altogether. “Fine! Ask me about what happened at the match.”

“Only if you want to tell.” Otabek isn’t really sure where to begin.

For him, he feels that the moment between Nikiforov and Katsuki, timing aside, was an important one. A courageous one.

Yuri doesn’t seem sure where to start, either. “Look, I knew how they felt about each other. And I guess it had to happen. But why did it have to happen then?” His head slowly drops onto his crossed arms.

Sometimes the moment is just right. That’s how Otabek feels. It’s not what he’ll say. “You won, Yura.” Yuri still hasn’t said anything about the nickname. He figures he gets a pass. “People will remember that.”

In the process of brushing his hair over to one side of his head, Yuri freezes. His voice is icy, too. “You think that’s what this is about.”

His mouth runs dry. “Yura--”

Yuri’s eyes flick to the side, and he grits his teeth. “I’m scared!” Yuri shouts. 

Otabek’s chest contracts.

More quietly, he repeats, “I’m scared for them. Vitya is so fucking _stupid_ and impulsive and he’s been so...so focused on just winning tournaments all the time I’ve known him, and then he had to go and find Katsuki and--and fall in love with him, and now he’s happy, they’re both so disgustingly happy, and Katsuki’s gone and kissed a world-famous Russian athlete at an international tennis tournament, and you’ve seen him, he’s this ball of anxiety--all this homophobic bullshit coming down is going to _ruin_ them, and I just--”

Shame washes over Otabek at how unfair he has been to Yuri.

Yuri, pressing the heels of his palms below his eyes, makes a small sound. A wounded sound. “I wish he hadn’t done that.”

Otabek looks away. If he ever had the right to Yuri’s vulnerability, he’s lost it now. He assumed in Yuri greed for glory and missed his fear for his friends. “It was brave.” 

Otabek’s lack of what straight people consider “tells” publicly shields him from scrutiny. Privately, too. Otabek has a handful of close gay friends, but neither Doug nor JJ, two of the most important people in his life, know his truth.

He’s one of Kazakhstan’s more prominent athletes. Can not sticking his neck out be called cowardice? It’s not so simplistic. But then it is. 

“It was stupid, and they need to be protected from themselves.” Yuri wipes at his eyes furiously. Like this, he looks small, like the boy Otabek knows he isn’t anymore.

“You can’t protect anyone,” Otabek whispers. He can’t protect Evgenia, who sneaks out to the same gay bars in Almaty where she took a shiner the night before, can’t protect Lauren, who goes to Pride parades in the Bible Belt. He can’t protect Yuri, whose flair threatens to be crushed by the vice of enforced athletic masculinity. And Yuri can’t protect Katsuki, who couldn’t bear to swallow down the bubble of his love for one moment longer. “You can only make sure they know they’re not alone.”

“It seems like the _whole world_ is against them.” The tremors of love and worry split fault-lines down his voice.

“You’re not.” And knowing what he knows now, Otabek would have Yuri at his side over an army.

Yuri raises red-rimmed eyes. His mouth twists. “If I tell them that sappy shit, they’ll be more insufferable than ever.”

Otabek has glimpsed his kindness through the cracks, and he won’t be taken in so easily anymore. He says nothing.

 

“We wouldn’t get married right away,” JJ says earnestly. “But I have found _the one,_ Otabek! Why should I wait?”

Why, really? For Otabek, who is eighteen, marriage is almost unimaginable, even beyond its impossibility. JJ is barely a year older. To make that kind of big, adult commitment with all the expectations and changes it brought so soon, so young? Even if he met _the one,_ Otabek couldn’t imagine shifting all his goalposts so fast. Otabek has, however, watched JJ with Isabella, watched their love sprout and flower. He can’t deny their connection.

There’s no good reason that JJ should not propose to Isabella at this stage except that it’s not a conventional age to propose. But. There are other paths to happiness off the beaten track.

So Otabek just adjusts his phone between his shoulder and his ear and asks, “What’s the plan?”

JJ chatters about lilies and coffee and scavenger hunts, a proposal with bells and whistles and frills, as elaborate as can be. Otabek thinks of telling him that Isabella would probably be satisfied by something sincere said on one knee. Then again, she is dating JJ. She can’t be completely opposed to theatrics.

“If you need any help,” Otabek tells him, “let me know.”

“Ah, I will, I will! And you? What about you? You’re always clammed up about your love life,” JJ jostles, playful.

“The only love I need is forty-love,” Otabek says, a joke that isn’t getting any better with the hundredth repetition.

It’s not that he doesn’t like dating. He’s been seeing somebody recently, he and Michael having petered off into platonic meme-sharing months ago, and he likes him quite a bit. Andre is a vocal performance major. Doesn't know one thing about tennis, but his mental musical library far surpasses Otabek’s fairly encyclopedic knowledge.

“You should let me set you up.” JJ rambles something-something double-date Isabella’s friend, and for both their sakes’, Otabek tunes him out.

“Can I tell you something?” The sudden gravity to his tone snaps Otabek out of his more-or-less pleasant stupor.

“Yes,” Otabek says right away. JJ should be able to share anything and everything with Otabek. The hypocrisy of this idea does not escape him.

“Sometimes, I just want—” Embarrassment mutes JJ’s bright tones. “I just _want_ Isabella so badly.”

Otabek isn’t sure what to say.

“You know. Sexually.”

Otabek winces. “I know.”

On love, Otabek and JJ’s perspective is the same. They are romantics. They’ve always talked the big F word, _Forever._ Since they were young, they have always been less interested in dating around than settling down. But that was where they diverged.

For his part, JJ remains resolute that he will save his first time for his wedding night.

While Otabek certainly likes going with Andre to movies and dinners, more than he ever liked fumbling with Michael in his car, that was never a realistic goal for him. There was no waiting until marriage for Otabek, who will probably never be able to marry a man in his home country.

“So what do you do?” JJ gulps his words. “When that happens. When you want someone that badly.”

Otabek does have to debate how blunt to be. He thinks of Andre’s plump thighs and feathering his fingers up to the heat of him. He settles on a frank, “Masturbate.”

JJ half-laughs, but he seems scandalized. “Otabek, come on.”

“What, need a pamphlet?” Otabek’s intent is not to be cruel. But JJ has shared a locker room with how many men? Besides, he could almost say for sure that this is a play for innocence too far. There’s no way. Or is there? Otabek doesn’t have a particularly high sex drive, and that _still_ hurts to think about for too long.

“Be serious,” JJ wheedles. Otabek would bet good money that he’s pink as anything.

Otabek drums his fingers on the table. “Why don’t you ask Isabella what she does?”

JJ all but squeaks. “Have you ever, in your life, had one single good idea?”

 

There are few times where Otabek really feels the disadvantage of his height. His—lack of height.

Nekola, with his lanky arms and long legs, is able to return every one of Otabek’s cross-court shots. All of Otabek’s running can’t help him reach balls faster than Nekola.

The US Open hard courts are too fast for Otabek’s style. Yes, he made it to the semis, but this is his first real challenge this tournament, and he’s failing it miserably.

Otabek returns another shot off-balance, and of course it goes wide. He double-faults on the next serve, and with another unforced error, hands him the game.

With how he’s scrambling all over the court, on the defensive, just trying to keep pace, he can’t really attack or even push back against Nekola’s assault. Every time he gains a little ground, he loses it even more quickly. Because of his extra inches on Otabek, Nekola can reach the ball much more quickly--the ball bounces up to chest level sooner for him, while Otabek has to wait for the ball to lose height, thus losing precious seconds where Nekola can regain his balance and move towards the ball.

Nekola breaks him twice that set.

No giving in. No giving up. Until match-point, he will fight for every last shot.

He doesn’t like to call a match before it’s over. 

He knows he’s going home before he can meet Yuri in the finals.

 

Doug tops off his water bottle from the cooler. He keeps glancing over at Otabek, who’s staring at his phone. “Who are you texting over there?”

“No one,” Otabek says truthfully. He’s looking at side-to-side pictures of Yuri at his first and second US Open, biting the cup both times. Already Yuri looks less boyish, a masculine refinement to his cheekbones. That Otabek is starting to know what’s behind the flare of those eyes makes his stomach flip over harder.

Turning off his phone, Otabek drops it into the front pocket of his bag. If he doesn’t want to miss the chance to meet Yuri on center court again, he has a lot of training to do.

“Fast points,” Doug shouts at his back, and Otabek shoots a thumbs-up as he jogs back to the baseline in the lurching September heat. Doug keeps driving him up to the line, tries to push him to finish points fast instead of settling into the long rallies he loves so much. “Fast points for fast courts.”

Fast points for fast courts. 

Otabek’s overhead nearly slaps the side of Doug’s head.

“You gonna off me?” Doug demands, catching the ball and lobbing it back across to Otabek.

“Not before I win a US,” he retorts. Otabek goes to bounce it, racquet arm dropping into forehand position so he can hit a practice serve, but Doug tuts, so he pulls it back into a full serve and misses. 

“You’re not gonna win an ATP 250 in this hemisphere with that serve,” Doug bounces the ball back over to him. “Pull your head out of the clouds or out of your ass or wherever it is, and get it back in the game.”

Doug’s disapproval scrapes raw along Otabek’s dignity. “Yes, sir.”

For all the flaws in his tennis, lack of focus has never been one of them. He needs to get it together. Forcibly, Otabek shoves his mind clear of everything but the shape of the racquet in his hand and the feeling of the ball in his palm.

There’s nothing but this for him. Nothing.

Fast points for fast courts, Otabek repeats to himself, and he serves again.

 

Yuri wrestles a stack of books past his elbow, then yelps when they collapse right across the webcam’s field of view.

Interest piqued, Otabek catches one title before Yuri sweeps them out of sight again. _”Warriors?”_ He recognizes the cats on the covers. 

Yuri’s expression shifts from self-consciousness to defiance in a heartbeat, and Otabek, awfully, wants to chase his vulnerability as far as it will go. “I read them when I was a kid.”

Otabek pictures Yuri at ten, bowl-cut bangs and precociousness, nose tucked in fantasy books. “Me too.”

Picking up one of the books, he studies spine. “I still read them,” Yuri admits, “sometimes.”

He nods at that, shifts. He wants to hear more. He doesn’t want to scare Yuri away. He’s like a skittish cat himself.

“It’s…escapism.” Yuri worries at the worn-out cardboard with a thumbnail and falls silent. 

Otabek can imagine that. Pages overflowing with fantastic battles, blood and wild beasts being a very good distraction from the rigors of topping a sport. “I read _Peter Pan_ over and over,” Otabek offers into the quiet.

“Peter Pan? What did you like about it?” For now, Yuri seems grateful to share the spotlight.

Otabek’s eyes slide over to his bookshelf. The blue of the book jumps out at him (alphabetical organization: Barrie, J.M.). “I wanted to fly.”

“Would you still want to fly?” Yuri asks seriously. “If you had to pick a superpower.”

He considers it, then nods. Rather than planes, his bike might be the next best thing. No matter how fast he rides, though, he won’t get his toes lifted off the ground and the sky wrapped around him. “You?”

Yuri narrows his eyes at him. “I would want to have laser vision,” he declares.

“You don’t already?” teases Otabek, and Yuri’s grin shows his canines. 

Moving his laptop around, Otabek shows him his bookshelves. Kazakh, Russian, English, and French novels, nonfiction, two encyclopedias, a couple of volumes of poetry. Stuffed to overflowing. Feels like peacocks comparing tailfeathers. Or perhaps in a more apt avian metaphor, a bowerbird showing a potential mate his nest. 

He pokes his head back into the frame and asks Yuri, “What else do you have?”

He hears Yuri’s feet followed by the patter of Puma Tiger Scorpion’s paws, and when Yuri returns, it’s with a teetering armful of books and a renewed animation to his expression. “The books were exciting. I liked to imagine that Potya had that kind of yearning sometimes, but then I wouldn’t want her to run away. They also made me much more enthusiastic about working on my English.”

Otabek studies him with his cat, fond. “What would Potya’s warrior name be?” 

Speculating for a moment, Yuri suggests, “Pumaclaw? Tigerheart?”

“Hm.” Otabek watches Potya leap up onto the desk, knocking over Yuri’s pens. Narrowly, Yuri saves his laptop, books, and coffee from the same fate. “Pumapaw, Tigerstripe, Scorpionstar.”

Resurfacing, Yuri scowls at him. “You know that’s not how the naming convention works.”

Oh, Otabek knows. “Scorpionstar? You like that, Potya?”

“Don’t!” Yuri covers her ears. “Though the authors could never keep the patterns consistent, either…”

Yuri lights up talking about _Pern_ and _Dinotopia,_ _Animorphs_ and _Redwall._ Otabek, who on account of his mother has been reading cheery tomes by the likes of Hugo and Tolstoy since he lost his baby teeth and has only read a smattering of young adult novels, does his best to keep up and enjoys every second of it.

For all his tooth and claw, Otabek enjoys the exuberance, just as unfettered and uncommon, that fireworks out of Yuri, too.

 

Otabek swallows back his nausea. Hands on his knees, he screws up his face. When he picks up his racquet, it’s _gingerly._ One more point, and then a water break.

It’s been a shit morning. 

When he woke this morning after half-remembered nightmares, he thought of Nikiforov and Katsuki, pummeled with death threats and pinned like butterflies under the Kremlin’s lens, whose kiss has been plastered over posters at demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, Thought of Yuri, who’s been sending him selfies of his hair elaborately braided, who’s careful but not careful enough. 

At dawn, Doug had him running up and down the bleachers at the local high school’s football stadium, which only shook up his insides more.

Doug watches him like a hawk as he fiddles with the tape on his racquet. “You miss the clay?”

Flicking his wrist, Otabek bounces the ball off the white line on the hard blue court. He doesn’t answer. His mind’s a blur.

“You earn it back,” Doug’s telling him, and Otabek’s stomach roils. He thinks of his defeat at Nekola and JJ’s hands. He has to believe he can. He can.

At the end of practice that day, Otabek sprawls out on the bench, a hand on his stomach. Pressing down. It’s like he ate something bad, like there’s a poison inside him. There’s too much he wants and can’t have. There’s too much he’s keeping inside.

Doug raps on the lockers with a metal clang. “You want tomorrow off?” Disapproving, but resigned.

Otabek shakes his head _no_ and levers himself up on his elbows.

“You haven’t been taking Sunday mornings off. You want to this week?” When Otabek fails to respond in the affirmative, Doug makes a noise in the back of his throat. “You could come to church with me.”

“No, thank you,” Otabek declines politely, even as his stomach rebels. The last thing he needs is to sit with a mask of courtesy and listen to talk of _traditional family values._

He drapes a damp towel over his eyes once he hears the sound of Doug packing to leave. He should call his mother, but what can he say about this sickness he feels? Perhaps he should talk to Yuri, who will not ask what Otabek does not volunteer, who will barrel past common courtesy and chase all the heavy out of Otabek with his chatter. 

With some effort, he pushes himself fully upright. “Coach.”

“Hm?” Doug turns at the open door, bag over his shoulder, brow knotted under his receding hairline.

Otabek breathes out. Gives it one last slow, deliberate think. “Can I take a week?”

Doug jerks around so fast he nearly splits open his forehead on the door’s steel cap. “Can you _what?”_

 

“I’d like to practice on the courts in Saint Petersburg.” Otabek must look ashen. His Kazakh accent sits heavier than ever on top of his Russian. “If it wouldn’t be an inconvenience.”

Feltsman, dour, just stares back at him through the phone screen. “There are many courts in Saint Petersburg.” 

Before booking his boarding pass, Otabek called Yuri about it. Yuri interrupted him halfway through _visit_ with a yes so fervent that took them both by self-conscious surprise. Then Yuri said (reluctantly) that Yakov should give his permission, shoved his phone at his coach, and left Otabek to it.

“With Yuri.” Otabek fights with his brain, but it still wants him to know that this rings of asking for Yuri’s hand.

“You want to train with your rival?” he questions him.

He does have some ulterior motives, Otabek wants to tell him, but probably not the ones Feltsman thinks. Nothing for it. “For a week.” He wants to train with his friend. 

Yakov grunts. Stands and _leaves._

Wet hair in a towel turban, Yuri returns and tells him that’s a yes, and while Yuri vigorously scrubs his hair, Otabek picks his flights. At this point, while he wonders what he’s signing up for, he’s all in already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the series referenced here is [warriors,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_\(novel_series\)) which is a kid's book series about cats dividing themselves into clans, worshipping cat gods, and killing one another very graphically. i figure yuri would like the series, but i'm also just writing my own childhood into this fic really hard, hahaha.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to binreiss on tumblr for [her amazing otabek fanart!](http://binreiss.tumblr.com/post/163817758889/otabek-altin-from-the-tennis-au-tie-break-in)

Dried to a husk after his long flight, Otabek staves off the headache in his temples as best as he can. Yuri driving Feltsman’s car, jumping around, recklessly tight around corners, isn’t helping.

Reaching Yuri’s flat is a relief.

Yuri grabs Otabek’s bag before he can. “Here it is. Home.” Yuri makes a gesture. “Ish.”

Otabek’s seen a portion of the flat’s interior from video calls. Now he has the full view. Yuri favors metal furniture and dark furnishing. Tons of trinkets, but a clean kind of cluttered except for the inevitable traces of cat hair on black fabric (Potya herself is nowhere to be seen). His curtains let in little light before Yuri flings them open to a street view of glittering yellow-red-green, the cosmopolitan night. 

Yuri looks at Otabek over his shoulder, waiting for his input.

“Nice,” Otabek says, and he means it. 

Satisfied, Yuri leads him next to the spare room and sets Otabek’s bag down next to the bed. “Yakov sometimes stays here, but don’t worry, I cleaned everything out so it won’t smell of old man.”

“Are you saying I don’t smell of old man?” Otabek pulls off his cable-knit sweater. In the past, Yuri has dubbed such garments _geezer couture._ “I’m touched.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Yuri opens up the bathroom door and gestures. “Clean towel, shampoo, all that stuff. You don’t smell good enough not to shower.” Implication: Otabek might smell good. “If you need something else, we’ll go shopping in the morning. Don’t get visitors here all that much. Oh--I forgot because we kept talking about other things--” More like since Otabek climbed in the car, Yuri kept talking, and Otabek didn’t once want to stop him. “Viktor invited us for dinner. Katsuki’s cooking. You’re not too tired?”

Otabek opens his mouth to answer.

“We can stay in,” Yuri hurries to say. “We can totally stay in, that’ll be fine. We don’t have to go. At all.”

Clearly, Yuri doesn’t particularly want to go. Otabek remains curious about Katsuki and Nikiforov, but he wants to do what Yuri wants. “Your choice.”

“You’re the guest,” Yuri protests.

Otabek blinks at him.

Hip in the doorway, Yuri kicks up a foot. He seems incredulous that he’s not about to be forced into social interaction. “We’ll go some other day. You’re probably tired. And Potya will be pissed if she doesn’t get to meet you soon. I’m going to go find her, actually--”

Otabek finds her first. Coming out of the shower dressed in his least-ratty sweats, he nearly trips over a furry log. He somehow averts tragedy, and by the time Yuri pokes his room into the hall looking for the two of them, Puma Tiger Scorpion is rubbing herself against his calves. 

“What did you do, shower in catnip?” Betrayed, Yuri crosses his arms over his chest. “Potya hates new people.”

“So do you, usually,” Otabek points out, and Yuri looks away at that, tapping his fingers on his biceps. 

“Maybe she recognizes your voice from all the Skype calls. Maybe your face, too.” Yuri sells himself on his own theory, nods. “She’s smart like that.”

Massaging the warm fluff of her neck, Otabek offers, “Maybe I’m just that good.”

Yuri doesn’t grace that with a reply. “You want the tour?” He marches him down the hall and flings a hand out. “Kitchen.” He sweeps out the other arm. “Living room.” Back down the hall, and he opens the door to his room. “Half my stuff is at my grandfather’s, but.” 

Still, there seems to be plenty of stuff to go around. On the walls, glossy posters and a watercolor of Moscow with _N. Plisetsky_ signed at the bottom when Otabek wanders over to look. Three racquets leaning against the wall and an open canister of balls with one left inside. Cat toys and a tangle of cords. Shoes piled on top of shoes plus jackets layered on a chair. His bed’s buried in pillows and duvets. 

What Otabek expected of Yuri’s flat, more or less. Public-facing cool, privately cozy.

When Otabek turns back around, Yuri’s arranging bottles of nail polish on the edge of his desk. With its glossy wood finish, the desk’s the oldest object in the flat, out of place, and Otabek guesses it’s another memento from his grandfather. “A bunch of these these are dried out.” Yuri shakes a bottle of dark green. “Ugh. Cheap.”

Otabek, who wouldn’t know, takes the green from him and turns it from side to side. He looks down at Yuri’s hands, where his current coat’s chipped away. He’s never seen him with polish on the court. The idea is probably that a man’s sinewy hand wrapped around a racquet shouldn’t be painted. Sadness raindrops into Otabek’s ribs.

Yuri sizes Otabek up much as he has been studying Yuri. There’s a little clench to his jaw. Challenge in his eyes.

Otabek holds up a rich red. “I like this one better.”

He pushes long hair behind his ears and takes it from him with his chin up again. A millisecond where their fingertips touch. “I like it better, too.”

 

Yuri stomps out of his room with his hood up. He slugs back coffee, wolfs a protein bar, drives them to the courts, and gets all the way through warmups before he finally lowers it.

“Yura here,” says Mila Babicheva, ruffling his blond hair, “is a morning person.”

Yuri bares his teeth. 

“It could be worse. You could be Zhora.” Babicheva rests her elbows on her knees and watches Popovich stomp around on the other side of the court. 

Babicheva’s a top 5 WTA player, one of Otabek’s favorites, actually. Maybe he just has a soft spot for Russians.

Otabek stares after Popovich. He’s not the cheeriest player Otabek has encountered in his ATP career thus far, but today the thundercloud over his head crackles.

“He got dumped,” Yuri grouches by way of explanation.

“ _Hard,_ ” Babicheva whispers. “He’s going to be fun today.”

“Better you than me, Baba.” Schadenfreude seems to perk Yuri up. Nodding at Otabek, he retrieves his racquet and jogs to his side of the court. 

Otabek serves first, and they play a pretty good first couple of points. 

It’s interesting to see Yuri in practice. When they hit before a match, he’s still in match-mode. But now, despite the fact that he’s playing with a competitor, he’s obviously much more relaxed. Though his shots are still tight, and he still makes faces at poor shots. 

“Relaxed” is relative for Yuri. At least he doesn’t seem to be as in his own head. Both a strength and a flaw: before he plays a shot, he analyzes it from every angle, seeing every possible shot and trajectory and outcome, and sometimes he seems to have so many ideas that he can’t choose one in time. That has to the biggest cause of his unforced errors. 

Then again, it also helps him edit his performance mid-match, change up his game and charge his opponent with new tactics.

When Otabek tosses a ball across the net so that Yuri can serve the next game, Yuri plonks it back over. Otabek’s hand shoots up on instinct, and the ball slaps into his palm. He’s confused, but he bounces it a few times and once again, serves. When he wins the second game, and their paths cross at the net, he tries to hand the balls over to Yuri.

Yuri takes them in his palms, then leans over, stuffing them right back into Otabek’s pockets. Yuri’s hands shoving down past his waist putting pressure on his thighs--can’t distract him from the poppycock that is happening. “Yura.”

“You’re serving,” Yuri says, swanning past.

“I’m serving again?” Yuri must be having a worse morning than Otabek thought.

A _snicker._ “You’re serving the whole match.”

Affronted, Otabek stares at Yuri in ready position, hips swinging cockily. Fine. Then he’ll make him--receive. 

Otabek serves game after game, the whole damn practice match. Constantly starting off the points forces a consistency to his play. Every point is offensive. He doesn’t have time to fall back into defense. 

“You know, Yura, maybe you would make a good coach one day.” It’s Nikiforov, crossing over to the benches on their side of the court and leaning on the net with an arm. “Like me!”

“Off the net, Vitya!” Yakov yells at him in a well-worn kind of way, and Nikiforov slips his arm off the net with a high-wattage smile. 

Yuri squints at him through his bangs. “Okay, but who told you that you were a _good_ coach?”

Nikiforov holds a hand to his forehead. “I am struck!”

A moment later, Katsuki joins Nikiforov, toweling off his sweaty pink face. “Ready, Viktor?”

“Ready, my Yuuri.” 

Behind Nikiforov’s back, Yuri mimes gagging.

With curiosity, Otabek watches from his spot behind the baseline of their own court, where they’re preparing to do some cool-down hits. Over on the next court, Babicheva and Popovich move to the same side and prepare to play doubles against Nikiforov and Katsuki. At the Hopman Cup the previous year, Otabek remembers, Babicheva and Popovich played mixed doubles, but this Nikiforov-Katsuki teamup is--new.

“No, it’s not,” Yuri tells him over a quick lunch when Otabek mentions it. “Actually--you’re probably not supposed to know this. Maybe.”

Otabek bites into a banana and doesn’t press. He gets up to throw away the peel and returns to find Yuri watching Nikiforov and Katsuki intently, arms crossed. He watches them as well.

“They plan to play doubles,” Yuri confesses. “Katsuki’s not planning to go back to singles at all, I don’t think. And Vitya apparently wants to show everyone that he wouldn’t do something so simple as just retiring from tennis altogether. It’s all crazy.”

When Katsuki and Nikiforov switch places from service line to baseline, they exchange a peck. Nikiforov cheers and laughs through every shot, and while Katsuki’s quieter, his round face shines. Seeing two professional players having so much fun, two men’s tennis players being so openly in _love,_ blows Otabek’s mind. It’s good.

Otabek nudges Yuri’s knee with his own when they break in the middle of an irritating and unfortunately very familiar footwork drill. “They seem happy.”

Yuri eyes them from under his fringe and _whuffs._ “They are. I just wish they’d happy somewhere where I didn’t have to have it stamped into my eyeballs,” he complains. 

Otabek looks at him for a moment.

Yuri plays with his water bottle, back and forth between his hands, nail polish catching the light. His expression contorts. Voice lowered, he says, “Guess their options are limited.”

 

Belly full, three days later not so much fighting the time difference as fighting the exhaustion of training all day, Otabek sags into Yuri’s sofa. He divides his attention between the documentary on lionesses they’re watching and Yuri, who’s sitting on the floor and redoing his nails.

Yuri holds his hand out to Otabek like he’s asking for a kiss. “Do my right hand.”

Otabek hasn’t painted nails since the time he got roped into it drunk at a party in Almaty, but he’ll do his best. He takes Yuri’s hand into his own. Feels his calluses. Refocusing, he draws the brush over each finger in painstaking strokes, managing to stay within his nails’ smooth bounds. Struck by inspiration, he heads back to Yuri’s room for another color.

=Uncapping the second bottle, he stripes gold across his little finger.

Yuri holds his hand out, assessing his drying nails. “Not bad. We should do yours next.”

Otabek looks down at his stubby fingers, covered in tiny cuts and blisters, hair sprinkled on the back. “What’s that you said about copying you?”

“I said,” Yuri says, sulking, “you can do it with my permission.” (No, he didn’t.)

Otabek caps the bottles, places them on the coffee table, and returns to the sofa.

Regardless of grumpiness, Yuri joins him on the couch. He leans his hot back against Otabek’s side, fingers spread so they can dry. “I’m going to get you one of these days.”

“Threats, promises.” 

The narrator’s voice calmly detailing the brutality of the hunt washes over him. Sprinkled-in sounds of snarling and tearing. Soothing, really. 

Potya comes creeping into the room. Clawing her way up the side of the sofa, which by the marks has suffered such treatment many times, she perches on the top. Occasionally, her tail will flick at Otabek’s face. His clumsy feet haven’t ruined his chances. He has been _chosen._

“If you sneeze,” Yuri warns him, “she’ll leave.” Yuri doesn’t tell him what will happen to Otabek if she leaves, and he doesn’t want to guess what Yuri will do.

“Never.” Otabek stares up at her cute little chin. “Who needs a lioness? Puma Tiger Scorpion, the first of her name, the world’s most perfect cat.”

“ _Damn_ straight,” Yuri says smugly. Yuri leans against him more emphatically somehow, and that’s like his approval, too.

Since he has arrived in St. Petersburg, he hasn’t checked the Skype group, and he has muted his Kazakh friends’ chat as well. Nor has he spoken to JJ beyond responding to a couple of his standard slice-of-life messages. Best not to think about why this visit has to be such a secretive and private thing. He’s just hanging out and practicing tennis with a friend. Tons of tennis players do it. Tons.

Otabek’s cheek touches Yuri’s cornsilk hair, and watching their hands, he shifts his wrist. Lifting his little finger, he lets it brush Yuri’s.

Yuri’s hand curls. Yellow-white fuzz of arm hair up to his wrist, ripe-pink of his knuckles. Up until the credit instrumentals play, Yuri links their little fingers.

 

“Keep it secret, keep it safe,” Otabek deadpans. “Etc.”

JJ squints at him. He’s never gotten him to sit through _Fellowship of the Ring_ in full--JJ’s more a _Love, Actually_ man. That he’s horribly hungover isn’t helping matters. “You can’t tell anyone. I’m so serious, Otabek.”

“I won’t.” Otabek pours JJ another glass of water.

Moaning, JJ sinks his head into his hands. “What would my family say?” 

Nothing good, imagines Otabek. They’re so traditional, they didn’t approve of JJ dating a half-Chinese woman (he also remembers them being initially dubious of Otabek himself, whose family is Muslim). He doubts they’ll approve of--

“A tramp stamp,” JJ moans again. “Will you look at it again? Tell me it’s not as bad as I think.”

Otabek tugs up JJ’s shirt in the back. “Could be worse.” JJ’s skin is still an angry red around the black letters of his _own initials_ (!), and Otabek has enough tattooed friends to know it needs more care than this. He’ll bring up tattoo upkeep...later.

JJ’s head thumps down into the table again. “How?” he howls.

“Could be Isabella’s name.”

“How would that be worse?”

“Longer, more surface area to remove.” Otabek drops JJ’s shirt, suddenly feeling awkward about it even though JJ was the one to ask. If JJ knew the reason Otabek wasn’t there to save JJ from himself the last night was that he was crashing with Michael, would he be letting him check the tattoo above his ass? 

Doesn’t matter right now. He’s seen JJ at his worst, and JJ has seen him at his, and what’s one little detail compared to everything they know about each other?

“I see your point. Sort of.” Morosely, JJ straightens out his shirt and straightens his posture, too. “You know what, it’s fine. I’ll just…not show Isabella. And be careful in locker rooms. Forever.”

“Wedding night surprise,” Otabek suggests, and he deserves JJ chucking the remnants of the water in his glass at his face (worth it).

 

Furtively, Otabek looks around. Checks that they’re alone. It’s mostly for show, mostly to make Yuri do a double-take.

Feltsman and the other four players are finishing up a morning run--Yuri, who’s dragged Otabek willingly into making training a competition, always makes sure they start and finish before anyone else. Every morning, they have the court to themselves for a bit.

Yuri’s eyes glitter with anticipation, and he hovers behind Otabek. “What do you have planned?”

Otabek ponderously bounces a ball. “Fair’s fair.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Not answering, Otabek goes over to turn on the ball machine. 

“What’s fair about this? Hey!” Scooting out of the way, Yuri plants his hands on his hips.

Otabek begins hitting. All the balls fly out of the machine to Otabek’s left hand. Which for him means forehands. He keeps glancing at Yuri. Eyebrows flicking up. Another forehand, every motion slowed and exaggerated. After a few minutes, he strides over and switches off the ball machine. “You asked.”

Yuri’s face pinches. “I asked for you to eat up practice time hitting easy forehands that you definitely already know how to do?”

_”I_ do. You don’t.” Otabek spins his racquet and then goes back to the baseline. Cheekily, he hip-checks Yuri. Leaving the balls in his pocket, he does a dry stroke, not hitting, just showing the form.

Yuri bounces on his heels. “Are you serious? You’re going to show me how you hit your forehand?” He’s running off for his racquet before Otabek can even confirm it.

Obviously it’s different for Yuri, with how he grips his racquet and how he hits with his right hand. And this stroke is _not_ intuitive. Still, he remembers Yuri’s impassioned inquisitiveness about it during their first phone call, and he wants to give him something in exchange for his assist on his serve.

“No. Not like that. Can I--” Otabek moves towards him.

Yuri looks at him from under sullen blond eyelashes and tight eyebrows. “ _Show_ me already.”

Otabek cups his elbow, takes his wrist. Chest to Yuri’s back, he adjusts his arms. He’s just showing Yuri a stroke he’ll never make in gameplay, he tells his uncooperative cardiovascular system. His heart pounds so hard Yuri can probably feel it. It’s--it’s not actually because he’s thinking about what fierce competition Yuri is. “Try now,” he says, still-faced, dry-mouthed.

Once Otabek gives him room, Yuri turns and executes the stroke. Pretty shot. Nothing like Otabek’s pretzeling left arm. “That wasn’t it, was it.”

Otabek makes a so-so gesture.

“How the shit do you do this.” Yuri flicks his hand at the ball machine. “Turn that thing on.”

They spend the better part of the next hour trying to hit forehands back and forth to one another. Otabek tries for Yuri’s textbook flow, shoulder through wrist, and Yuri tries Otabek’s upward jerk that generates all that crazy spin.

Yuri calls it when he tries to finish with Otabek’s lasso over his head and knocks off his visor.  
Scowling, Yuri stomps over, and while Otabek’s bent double laughing, hits the hat off Otabek’s head for good measure. “Watch me try to fix your serve again. Fucker. Hope you’re proud of yourself for having the world’s most life-threatening forehand. ”

Otabek’s reasonably proud of himself. 

Flipping his hat off the ground on the tip of his racquet, Yuri holds it back out to him, all smug business again. “Oh, speaking of your serve--” 

And there goes his morning.

 

“Come on, you big baby, you can do more than that.” Amusement colors Yuri’s voice as he slides more weights onto the ends of the bar Otabek’s heaving upright. He’s spotting him, palms ready to catch the bar should Otabek drop it. Which at this point might be a legitimate worry.

Otabek can admit it--he wants badly to impress Yuri. His muscles strain and pop as he does his reps. Sweat prickles over his forehead. By the time he sets the bar back in place, he’s breathing like a bellows. When he looks up, Yuri smirks down at him. “You now.” He’s going to wipe that smirk off his face.

Yuri twists his mouth up at him. He looks resentful. He looks kissable. Rubbing his palms off on his tiny shorts, he wraps his hands around the bar and lifts. His biceps ripple and his head falls back, mouth an “O.” “Fuck shit,” he says eloquently, gritting his pretty jaw hard.

“Less?” Otabek prepares to grab some of the weight off the end.

“No! I can--” Yuri lowers his arms, and Otabek gently knocks his elbow into safer alignment. He grunts like he does in the last set of a five-setter through his reps. _“God._

Draping his wrists over the bar, Otabek asks, “Good?” He likes how the burn bakes itself into his body. Different, harder on blood and bones than swimming or running drills. Have to be careful with it.

Yuri sets it down, sits up enough to drink his awful sports drink-- _cherry,_ the worst possible "flavor." He curls one hand back around the bar, fingertips falling one by one onto the damp metal, gold-painted little finger last. “Kinda, yeah.” Grumbling in the tone that Otabek recognizes as cheerful, Yuri pushes past him to get into the locker room first, hot sweaty shoulder jostling Otabek’s, and under his incongruously sweet shampoo--honey?--he smells deliciously dark.

 

Otabek pushes onto one foot, adjusting his balance under the stuffed shopping bags hanging off his arm, and checks his phone for something to do with his free hand.

All morning, Yuri has been dragging him in and out of shops.

For Otabek, the idea of someone enjoying shopping is bewildering. He likes lingering over motorcycles he can’t afford monetarily or spatially, sometimes, he supposes. Otabek’s mother also hates shopping, so much so that Otabek wants, one day, to make enough money that she can pay someone to do it for her. None of his friends, nowhere in the world, can get him to stay in a mall for long. 

Except. 

“What do you think?” Yuri turns out his ankle and cranes his neck over his shoulder like that’s a better way to see the sparkly shoes he’s trying on his feet. Crystals on canvas shoes. Otabek will never understand him in a hundred lifetimes. 

Otabek drops his bags and hefts up Yuri’s foot on his knee. Yuri laughs at him with his eyes, and he keeps his balance easily, back a bow. In another life, he could have been a dancer. His fingers circle around Yuri’s delicate ankle. “Yes.”

Yuri swivels his foot, self-congratulatory. “The shoe!” 

Otabek drops his foot and catches Yuri against his shoulder before he can so much as teeter, not that he needs the help with his impeccable balance. “Your feet are disgusting.”

“Say that, and I’ll make you massage them.” Yuri tucks the box under his arm. “I’m getting them.” Halfway through the line at the register, Yuri makes a face, puts the box on top of a display, nearly knocking a heel off its perky perch. “No, I’m not.”

“I will,” Otabek says as Yuri hauls him out of the store. 

“Eh?” Yuri’s looking between the row of shops ahead of them and his phone, and squints at Otabek.

Nonchalant, Otabek explains, “I will massage your feet.”

“Have you ever thought,” Yuri says, hauling him in front of a shop-front full of Disney merch and shoving up against his side, lifting his phone for a selfie, “you’re the disgusting one?”

Otabek throws up a solemn peace sign. 

Yuri’s been posting their locations all over Piter constantly with a surprising amount of bravery considering that his fans are getting nuttier and nuttier. 

At the US Open quarters, some woman unhooked her bra and yanked it out of her shirt for Yuri to sign (he did, but not without a GIF-able side-eye at the camera). Meanwhile, an old man at the tennis shop where Otabek was buying new strings (Otabek goes through a lot of strings) told him he reminded of his son, then stood there for a while, holding a canister of balls and looking lost. Ah, fame.

Yuri’s tapping away at his phone, and Otabek peers over at his shoulder. 

Then snatches it from him. “What is this? #throwbackthursday #90skid?” Otabek does some indignant back-calculation. “You weren’t _alive_ in the 90s.”

Going red, Yuri grabs his phone and stuffs it in his pocket without posting the selfie, which Otabek really thought was a nice picture of them together. To cover for his embarrassment, he scans the shop-front. “You know, I was thinking. If you’re Peter Pan, then who would I be.”

Otabek bites his tongue.

Yuri stares down the blond-haired, pouting fairy figurine. “I’m Tinker fucking Bell, aren’t I. This is bullshit, Otabek.”

“Did you want to be Wendy?” Otabek believes in growing and changing. He doesn’t really want to be Peter, either.

“Wendy’s stupid,” Yuri mutters. “On the nose, huh? Me being a _fairy.”_

“Yura,” Otabek says, too quick and too sharp, “you’re not a fairy.” Yuri is hard-eyed and strong-limbed and stunning, like the boys and trans girls he knows in Almaty who sneak out in pink and come back bloody-mouthed, fem all the way through. 

His heart tumbles over in terror and longing. He thinks that if here in a bustling mall in broad daylight in Saint Petersburg, he puts his hand on Yuri’s back, the world might crumble to pieces.

Yuri turns away from the display and as they walk off in whatever direction (he’s been leading them all over the mall like dot-snake, plan only apparent to him), draws his phone out of his back pocket. In the middle of the doorway to a glossy, crowded store, traffic splitting irritably around them, Yuri shows him the new caption, eyes big, lips defiant: ‘#friendgoals.’

JJ is Otabek’s friend. His best friend. He’s washed his vomit out of his shirt, he’s been ignored by him for two weeks, he’s taken him to hospitals and airports and the _pharmacy_ because he needed _fungus cream_ and Otabek had to turn off his brain and not think of why. He sees that JJ’s objectively good-looking, he loves him very much, and he thanks a God he barely believes in that he’s spared anything other than platonic affection from him. 

Whatever it is that’s growing between him and Yuri, spinning out silver threads stretching space and time between them and tangling him up in it--it’s _not_ that.

Otabek inserts his arm under Yuri’s and posts the picture.

 

Otabek picks up the tiny octopus with his chopsticks. His eyes zero in on Yuri’s. He places it on his tongue. Closes his mouth. Chews, and swallows.

Yuri goes pale, and his arm jerks.

Checking his phone after it buzzes in his pocket, Otabek sees that Yuri has texted him _nooooo._ He holds the chopsticks pointedly, lifts his eyebrows, and takes another bite.

When he’s helping Yuuri wash the dishes, he thanks him for inviting him.

Yuuri looks at him, very politely, like he’s grown a second head. “Of course, Otabek. Why wouldn’t we invite you?” 

Otabek has no good answer for that, so he just dries the dish Yuuri hands him and keeps his mouth shut like he was raised with manners. It’s--nice to be welcomed into a group of tennis players and finally feel like he might be an equal, even if he’ll never have Viktor’s forehand, Yuri’s ace, Katsuki’s footwork, Mila’s overhead, Georgi’s volley… _Sometimes_ he feels like an equal. In any case, as much as they both like their solitude, he thinks Yuri is very lucky for being able to train with these players.

Dinner has been pleasant, too. Viktor and Yuuri, not to mention the very charming Makkachin, play hosts like newlyweds, and Otabek likes the way their styles have come into unison in their flat. Big personalities talking over one another, so Otabek has been contributing to the quiet in-between, and it’s been a nice balance. 

Georgi, Mila, Viktor, and Yuri will be leaving the next morning for the Davis semis, though, so this dinner party can’t last too late. Kazakhstan and Japan are both out already this year.

Otabek pours Yuuri a drink and just loud enough that Yuri can hear, asks him for the octopus recipe.

Drink in hand, he returns to his seat to find that Yuri’s swapped chairs with Mila and is now sitting beside him, sipping his sake and gesturing violently at Georgi as they argue over some doubles players Georgi doesn’t like. Yuri doesn’t like them, either, Otabek remembers with a start. He must just be defending them to be contrary. It would figure.

The moment Otabek sits, Yuri casually slings a hand across the back of Otabek’s chair. His hand hangs loose so that his fingertips skate his skin through his shirt. No one seems to notice, but it’s all Otabek can think about. The casual claim of it. The thoughtless closeness. How badly he wants this and more, and more.

“It was a nice evening,” Otabek says to Viktor at the door, ignoring that as Yuri puts on his shoe he grasps Otabek’s arm for balance and suddenly Yuri’s touch is the only thing he can remember happening all night.

 

“You come into _my_ house, you win the tournament in _my_ city--” Yuri emerges from the fridge and clinks his bottle against Otabek’s in congratulations.

Otabek sips and carries on chopping onions. “You weren’t here.”

Hopping up on the counter with the carrots he’s peeling, Yuri fixes him with a look. “That’s not the only reason you won.”

They planned Otabek’s trip so that while Yuri was at the Davis Cup (where he won his semi for Russia, as did Mila), Otabek would stay at Yuri’s place instead of getting a hotel for the St. Petersburg Open. Cat-sitting Puma Tiger Scorpion was his “rent.” Wasn’t a hardship. Puma Tiger Scorpion, who spent most of the day lounging around when she wasn’t creeping on Otabek to feed her, was a low-maintenance roommate.

Unlike _someone._

No, that wasn’t fair to Yuri, who he’s been sharing space with again since he returned from the Davis Cup, Otabek staying on a few more days as he made it to the St. Petersburg Open finals. Yuri would be playing the tournament, too, if not for the awkward proximity to the Davis semis. As a substitute, Yuri will be playing the Kremlin Cup instead. 

Otabek’s finally flying back tomorrow with a cool 250 points, nothing to sneeze at, so good news. However, what preoccupies him more now is that after two weeks with Yuri, he’s not going to see him unless they can steal time together at the next tournament they both play. He’s certainly not going to get the chance to stay with him again for such an extended stretch of time for--he doesn’t know how long, with both their schedules, both their ambitions.

It weighs heavy on his mind. How much Yuri matters to him just seven months after they really met. 

Because their time together has been _good._ Not without stop-and-start spats about dish duty or first showers, not without the elbow-room negotiations needed by two habitual loners inhabiting the same small flat, but _good,_ fun, comfortable. 

 

Otabek tips the onions off the cutting board into the pot and glances at Yuri. 

One earphone in, Yuri grooves to music from the phone in the pocket of his hoodie (or Otabek’s hoodie that he’s nabbed and about which Otabek won’t utter a word).

“Going to share?” Otabek raps his knee with the spoon handle, and Yuri kicks him without force before pulling his earphones out of the jack so Otabek can hear the music, too.

While Otabek continues to stir their dinner, Yuri walks around the kitchen, sipping his drink. Not dancing, not really any more than he usually does when he walks, but in tune with the rhythm, tapping his feet or his fingers. They’ve discussed music before and swapped songs back and forth, so the bulk of the playlist doesn’t surprise Otabek. Punk rock, alt rock, metal, some dancier tracks. 

Settling on the barstool across from Otabek, Yuri reaches up and undoes the bun he had for hygienic purposes. The music changes, and the fingers Yuri’s running absently through his loose hair freeze.

Otabek taps the wooden spoon against the pot, nodding along. He can’t help the crinkle of his eyes. It’s still music he can get into--very little that’s well-crafted isn’t--just a _surprise_ from Yuri.

“Hey.” Yuri points his bottle at him. “I am large,” he says in English, “I contain multitudes.” Otabek’s mother’s favorite line that he often quotes at Yuri, and now Yuri lobs it back at him.

“Is liking Tansy contradicting yourself?” Tansy is not Otabek’s _favorite,_ but she has a couple winners. She’s not sugary, has an edge to her, always solid vocals.

Yuri leans back dangerously in his chair with a moody sigh. Eyes cast at the ceiling, he flings his arms back and hefts forward again at the drop of the beat. “Very well, then, I contradict myself.”

Otabek bites back a laugh, happiness streaming through his whole body, making him hum as he turns the stove off and goes for two bowls. 

Texting Yuri, calling him with voice and video, they’ve all become an important part of his life outside of training, that’s easy enough to see, to say. They talk so much shop that conversations with Yuri still fall within the realm of tennis. Enjoying practicing and training with Yuri can still be considered professional, friendly. 

What’s harder to hold is the deep-rooted contentment of stepping into Yuri’s space, breathing his air, waking up in the morning to be with him for another day.

In seven hours, Otabek will be catching a red-eye, and he doesn’t know when he’ll next get the chance to cook dinner for Yuri in his kitchen with him in his appropriated hoodie with his appropriated Whitman lines to defend his favorite guilty pleasure Australian pop act.

 

It’s a slightly less piss-poor hour in Almaty, but he’s still not expecting the call from his mother when he’s at the gate, drifting morosely in and out. Since he was a boy, she’s mainly let him handle their communication, not wanting to hover or stifle. Chest lightening a little, he picks up the call. “You should still be asleep, Ana.”

A pregnant pause.

Otabek makes a sound and leans back, mashing the heel of his hand into his eyelids. “You’re not in _college_ anymore.” She shouldn’t be pulling all-nighters.

“You know, technically--”

“Ana,” Otabek chastises. He studies his boot, scuffed anew after Yuri accidentally stepped on it. 

“Evgenia and I are doing very exciting work, Otabek, very exciting. We think the vibration of the particles…” His mother’s Kazakh lulls him pleasantly, and he closes his eyes and plays with his keychain as he listens to her mini-lecture. “We hope to present soon--well, not really so soon, we need to clock some more hours in the lab first, certainly. By the time we present, you’ll be playing the Australian Open. Anyway,” she says suddenly, tone growing devious. “How was your time with that Plisetsky boy?”

He thinks of the rhythm of their rallies. The quality of their silence in the early morning. Yuri’s gold-striped little finger hooking around his own and holding on. “Good.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd like to share some [perfect perfect art](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/249666864060301322/340932623075508224/otayuri_tennis.jpg?width=664&height=785) my friend drew for this fic that in a happy accident, ended up fitting with this chapter super well! credit to the always lovely [lacemonster](https://twitter.com/lacemonsterbats) for this. the pic referenced is one of rafael nadal (otabek's inspo for you tennis fans who haven't caught on yet) and andy murray embracing lovingly at the net like the good bros they are.

This hardcourt season’s an exciting one to be a tennis fan and a player. Otabek’s still not a fan of the blur of blue-green-white, misses clay smudging his knees, but this year goes better than any before for him.

He makes different choices. He works hard. And it pays off.

Although he made the semis at the China Open last year, he skips it in favor of Shanghai in October. He wins. Takes home 1000 points instead of the 500 he might have taken in Beijing.

He’s not the only one having a good season. The World Tour Finals are shaping up to be exciting this year, the top four (Otabek is _third seed_ ) coming in hot. JJ wins the Rogers Cup, and in October, Giacometti wins Paris. And of course there’s Yuri, who has won the last two US Opens. That October, Yuri is in Tokyo.

The Japan Open garners more attention this year; it won’t be long until the Olympics are played in the same city.

Yuri keeps trying to pressure Otabek into Snapchat, Otabek keeps resisting, so Yuri has to text him the selfies he takes framed by neon Tokyo night, and Otabek gets to keep them without question. 

Otabek points out Viktor and Yuuri locked in a passionate embrace in the background of one. 

Yuri sends him a heart-stopping _this could b us 2020!!!_ and then--follows it up with a picture of a tea house filled with flowers and packed to the gills. Ah. The kicker: Yuri sends him that selfie again, kiss cropped out.

 _vitya really loves this city .._ Yuri sounds treacherously fond.

_I’d like to explore it, too._

_no like. he really loves it. idk_  
_same-sex civil partnerships are legal in some parts of the city_  
_and ever since he met piggy in hasetsu he’s been raving abt japan_

Does Yuri suspect that Viktor is planning to move? _Has he said anything?_

_no.. doesnt mean anything tho. he tries to b mysterious or w.e_

_Mysterious? Nikiforov?_

_i did say t r i es_

_What about Katsuki?_ Yuuri also spent half their dinner speaking wistfully of home.

_i don’t know. Ok? i don’t know._

That last message hints that Yuri’s in a mood, and Otabek doubts he can crack it over text, especially when Otabek would just echo his suspicions. _Good luck tomorrow._

He wants Yuri to win, really wants him to win. That makes sense for a close friend, but it doesn’t make sense for a competitor. In the whirlwind that was his two weeks in St. Petersburg, he let himself get very involved with Yuri. Too involved. Away from the delirium, he stares the facts right in the face. 

The facts: he very much cannot do this with Yuri, and yet he cannot pull away from him.

Eventually, Yuri texts back _don’t need luck_ and follows it up with a couple snapshots of languid stray cats accompanied by heart emojis.

_Cute, but Puma Tiger Scorpion >>> _

Yuri sends him a _!_ and _two_ hearts.

 

Bag of candy in his hand, Otabek trudges up to his apartment, rain-wet motorcycle boots squeaking in the stripped concrete of the stairwell.

At his door, he stops. A battered package lies on his doormat. Bending, he picks it up and balances it on his hip to read the sticker. It’s from Saint Petersburg. It’s from _Yuri._

After he toes off his boots, he tears open the bag of candy, dumping half in the pumpkin-shaped glass bowl he has for the trick-or-treating kids from the building who will come by his door tonight.

He’ll be celebrating his birthday, which falls on Halloween here, tomorrow. Ride bikes with Lauren up to the state park two hours away, then take an Uber out to the city to a gay bar to grab his first legal drinks in America and work a DJ gig.

Coach gave him fine scotch so expensive Otabek will probably let it age another ten years before he works himself up to drink it (Doug was onto Otabek--handing over the wrapped bottle, he reminded him wryly, “Bought this with your money, so drink up”). His mother gifts him two e-books. From JJ, a ticket to a concert in Montreal, friendly bribery to come see him and Isabella. 

And then Yuri’s present, whatever it is. He’s savoring the chance to open it.

Candy for the kids ready, door decorations double-checked, Otabek hurries himself off to a shower to wash off the mud sprayed on him. Then, hair dripping down his shirt, he finally cuts the tape on the box. First he lifts out a note. Yuri’s handwriting spikes impatiently across the back of a postcard of the Tokyo Imperial Palace: _you wouldn’t look good in zebra stripes._

Rustling through acid-free paper, he reveals what Yuri sent him with a sharp inhale. Otabek unfolds it, admiring the smooth texture, and raises it up under his kitchen lights. A beautiful black leather jacket. When he opens up the jacket, he sees that it’s lined with startling fire-orange tiger stripes. On the back, there’s a matte panel with textured tiger stripes instead, black-on-black, surprisingly subtle.

 _Awesome,_ he texts Yuri immediately. Though he doesn’t often use emojis, he sends him a thumbs-up.

Yuri texts back right away despite the hour over there. _did those idiots actually manage to get it to you on your birthday?? i was freeaaked_  
do you love it  
try it on! pics

Otabek runs his fingertips down the lining. Careful to towel off his hair so he doesn’t get the leather wet, he shrugs it on over his sleep t-shirt. Against his shower-warm skin, it feels cool. The fit is perfect, and the weight hangs well on him. He studies himself in the bathroom mirror once he’s wiped it clear of fog, turning this way and that. It looks _good._ He looks good.

Nevertheless, it’s shyly that he sends Yuri the picture, from upturned lips down to his waist.

 _fuck, i have amazing taste_ and three fire emojis, then a picture back. It’s Yuri in the shop in Tokyo where he must have bought it, preening in the mirror with the jacket held open over his crop-top, loose blond hair spilling over the collar.

Someday the balloon has to burst. Someday he has to stop pretending this is something he can have.

Popping the collar, Otabek breathes in, and under the aroma of leather, there’s a paint-stroke of honey shampoo.

 

“It’s What the Fuck, anyway,” Yuri says forcefully, spitting out the English. “Right? Right?”

“Right,” Otabek agrees, placid. He refreshes the livestream they’re screensharing. 

Embarrassingly, neither he nor Yuri have made it this year to the finals of the World Tour Finals, known gravely by much of the tennis world as WTF. It is kind of What the Fuck.

Giacometti’s groundstrokes are on fire, and JJ dives and leaps theatrically to return the shots. It’s a great show, amazingly athletic tennis from two players he greatly admires, and he wishes a little that Yuri would stop complaining over the replays but not enough to make him stop.

JJ takes the first set with fanfare. Then Giacometti climbs back up, Otabek silently cheering JJ on and Yuri thunderous regardless, and he wins the next two sets. He wins the match.

Rankings have been bumped around lately with Yuuri, previously the fifth seed, dropping straight (“straight”) out of the singles’ rankings to play doubles with Viktor. 

JJ’s been holding steady at four for a while and has been despairing to Otabek about his dropping number since Yuri trounced him at the 2017 Wimbledon. Only recently have rankings felt relevant to Otabek. 

The French win shot Otabek up all the way to third seed. That’s where he bumped into the ceiling. While Yuri holding 4000 points from his US and Wimbledon wins, plus the points he’s racked up elsewhere, he’s untouchable as first seed. So in Yuri’s eyes, Giacometti’s win is a non-threat, but for Otabek, the gap between him and the second seed has just widened.

Another risk of this? Only the top two are guaranteed to be in separate halves, and meeting Yuri in a final once only whetted his appetite for it. Right now, he has a fifty percent chance of being slotted by the draw to meet Yuri in the semis. That’s a seventy-percent chance of being slaughtered by him in the semis. He doesn’t have his mother’s gift for numbers, but he _knows_ that’s no good.

Otabek’s pulled out of his pessimistic mathematics by Yuri playing music, loudly, over the trophy ceremony. Obediently, he exits the livestream, and Yuri’s face fills his whole screen again. “Good match.”

Yuri just grunts. His eyes are flicking, and his knuckles are busy. He’s tweeting about it, Otabek guesses, that is until Yuri texts him with screencaps. 

He stares at them. A profile on a dating website? His stomach sinks halfway to his toes before he sees the profile picture. “Popovich?”

“You don’t think he needs all the help he can get? Here. Let’s screen-share again.” Yuri’s cursor zooms back and forth over the screen. A little maddening to think Otabek can’t even keep up with his _trackpad._

Wow. Yuri’s filled out a number of the questions already. Otabek can see where he started off sincere and then degraded into sardonic.

Otabek tilts his head to the side, chin in palm. 

“Look, he’s been flinging himself around the courts reading Shakespeare. And John Donne! John Donne. I didn’t know who he was before, but I do now, and I. Hate. _Everything._ ” Yuri selects _Yes, and I would want my partner to be, too_ with unnecessary violence for the next question. “Aren’t you some kind of Cupid? Help me out here.”

“Cupid,” Otabek repeats, dumbfounded.

“A matchmaker. You helped Leroy meet his fiance,” Yuri states, “and didn’t you get Lauren and Evgenia together, too?”

Not _really._ They started talking to each so much in the chat that they almost crowded everyone else. Finally Otabek dropped by Lauren’s shop, showed her his phone filled with their virtual love letters, raised his eyebrows, and she slapped her forehead. That was probably about three years ago now. And JJ and Isabella were a happy accident, something Michael still snorts about today. 

But. Otabek turns out his fingers, cracking his knuckles, and Yuri’s eyes go wide in that way that means he’s _delighted._ “Pick a profile picture where he doesn’t look like--that.”

Yuri snorts at the hint of meanness. “He can’t help that he’s cousin to toads everywhere, but I guess I can pick a less froggy angle…” He switches to another tab and runs dizzyingly down Georgi’s Instagram feed, then crawls through his Facebook photos. There are a _lot_ of pictures with ex-girlfriends, paragraphs and paragraphs of sappy captions. 

Even with Yuri’s half-Saturdays, they stay up way too late for his timezone, volleying questions back and forth. Yuri goes for brutal accuracy and to weigh some on the other side, Otabek goes for flattering half-truths. Of course, it’s all guesstimation. “How confident do you think Georgi is in his sexual ability?” “Would Georgi let a pet sleep on his bed?” “Ideal partner--pushes him to succeed or tells him to be realistic?” They message two girls on Georgi’s behalf, get liked back by one. 

“He likes those kinds of girls...she owns a chihuahua and does community theater, he’ll eat that up,” Yuri argues. “Look, that counts as a win.”

“About time he wins something,” Otabek says wickedly, just to make Yuri huff that quick cruel laugh out of his nose. 

“You’re _mean.”_

“I’m in a good mood,” Otabek says, neither affirmation nor objection. Rolling his cheek over his knuckles, tired, he gazes back at Yuri.

“Hey.” Yuri’s got a little edge to his expression, lighted up from underneath by his laptop. “What’s _your_ type?”

Otabek thinks of Michael, his lightning-fast sketches and the life he could breathe into a picture with color. He thinks of Andre’s voice rising through a room. And he thinks of Yuri stepping forward and swinging his racquet, whole body an arc of light. “I like artists.”

Yuri’s eyes flicker.

If Otabek’s said the wrong thing, he doesn’t know what else to say. What would be too far. Yuri waded them into the shallows, but Otabek might dive too deep into what he knows--what they _both_ know. “Yours?” he asks, hoarse.

Leaning back, Yuri crosses his arms over his chest like a gate clanging shut. “I thought we were talking about Georgi.”

 

He wouldn’t say that making it to the Australian finals in January was _easy._ Compared to how he sawed his way through the past US, though, it’s cutting through butter. Nose to the damn concrete, he’s made breakthroughs. Helps, however, that two people on his way up walked due to injury.

Yuri strides across the court to meet Otabek. Plain in grey, Otabek stares at Yuri’s shorts and shirt in pink, red, and black, stylized flames on his wrist-bands. The representation of animal print has been saved for a customized racquet. It doesn’t work, but it _does._ “Davai,” Yuri spits before Otabek can. 

Otabek flashes him a thumbs-up.

The first set passes in the blink of an eye, a 6-4 win for Otabek. While Otabek’s not hitting winners, his serve’s holding up pretty well. Yuri serves first in the next set, and Otabek chases down his balls. Sure, if Otabek drags this out longer, Yuri’s endurance may fail him, but holding back, playing defensive is a mistake. 

So Otabek stays on the offensive. He finishes points faster. 

His height may be a disadvantage with how high the ball bounces off the ground here, but Otabek won’t let that stop him. He hits hard. He plays unrelentingly. The second set ends up his, 7-5.

Yuri’s flipping his racquet hand to hand, teeth bared. He’s just lost two sets in a row at the final of a major, a major at which he has not yet won a title, and no doubt he won’t let it slip past him with so little trouble. He pulls out his aces and games go by in a blur until they’re sitting at 5-5. Yuri hits powerful shots, balls zooming off the court straight at Otabek. Playing across from him--exhilarating, always.

Running headlong at the net, Otabek jumps up to smack a ball out of the air. Overhead, both feet in the air. When he lands, he lands rough, but he is already running to return Yuri’s next ball. Although he recovers well, in the end, that set still goes to Yuri, 7-5 with one break of Otabek’s service. 

The crowd’s going wild. They love a back-and-forth, an edge-of-the-seat match, and this is top-notch tennis to them. It’s exciting even to Otabek, who’s going to have to beat that snarling wildcat on the other side of the net.

As they pause for water, Yuri leans back, arms over the back of the bench. He looks over at Otabek, and he wonders if Yuri’s thinking of that dinner at Viktor and Yuuri’s where his arm was around Otabek instead, because that’s what Otabek can’t help but remember for a second. 

The first to look away, Otabek depolarizes the meeting of their eyes and heads back for the fourth set. 

2-3, fifteen-all. Otabek finishes his forehand over his head and before it even bounces, he knows it’s a winner, clean and clear. 

Racquet held high, Yuri claps his hand off the strings, shaking his head in admiration, and Otabek’s heart almost jumps out of his ribs. Yuri _never_ applauds an opponent on the court.

The next time Yuri serves, Yuri hits two aces in a row, probably just to teach Otabek a lesson. The following point is intense, too. Zig-zagging back and forth across the court. The rally, by Otabek’s estimate the longest of the match so far, at least twenty balls, goes to Otabek. That game, Yuri scrapes a win from deuce.

Otabek holds his next service game, though he has to go to second serve twice, and takes them to 4-3 without much trouble. There, he struggles to break Yuri. Yuri’s not giving ground, but Otabek pushes and pushes, dogs every last shot. After hovering at ad again, he breaks Yuri, and the score’s 5-3.

His first serve is a let, drooping sadly onto Yuri’s side of the net. He serves again, and it’s passable, gets them started on another long point. Back and forth, back and forth. Otabek will hit what looks like a winner, and Yuri will return it and send him running instead, and Yuri will hit a sure thing, and Otabek will dive after it and get it back just inside the lines. 

Then an off-balance Yuri can’t quite regain his footing, hits the racquet with a funny angle that produces an odd bounce. Otabek races up to the net for a huge overhead.

And then. Coming back down, Otabek lands too hard, or too off, or _something_ he doesn’t know can’t think--

Lucky the shot lands in and out of Yuri’s reach, because he has to conceal a limp heading back to the baseline. When he landed, he felt like he’d been stabbed below the knee-cap. Pain lances through his leg with every step. Something is wrong. But Otabek’sso fucking close, up fifteen-love in the Australian Open finals. Three more points. He can do this.

He sets his jaw, tries to breathe steady. Rears back, comes down, and his right knee _screams._ Fault. Double fault. Fifteen-all.

On the other side of the net, he can see Yuri pause. Stare straight at him, and Otabek can see that his face is screwed up even if he can’t quite see his expression. 

He can do this. Otabek serves. Serves again. His second serve makes it in, and he pounds his way across the court returning Yuri’s shot. Far from taking it easy on him, Yuri keeps making him work for it. Otabek’s panting by the finish, but the point is his, thirty-fifteen. Two more. Two more.

The next ball is a forehand. He feels the full rotation, the force of it in his bones. Yuri crosses the court in several long strides, makes a mad lunge to return it, but his ball lands nowhere. Forty-fifteen.

Adrenalin fades the screech of his knee to a whimper. He can _do this._ Otabek serves, first serve, Yuri returns it, Otabek returns it. Yuri hits a very pretty backhand. Otabek volleys. Yuri takes him back to the baseline, up to the net. With his leg just barely not buckling, he runs up and up and he _almost_ crashes into the net, but no part of his body touches it before the fast-moving ball bounces twice.

He’s so focused on that, on that fuzzy green thing hitting the court twice so he can win the point, that he doesn’t realize it for a second. Doesn’t realize he--won the match. 

He won the match, he won the Australian Open. He won his second major. The second time he faced Yuri, he won against him again. He _won._

Watching the Australian Open with his mother is one of his earliest memories. He remembers how entranced he was by the players facing each other so fiercely, the crayon color of the court on their shitty television, and how his mother grabbed him up and spun him around when her favorite won. He knows she’s in Almaty now, watching her son become the world second seed.

So much is going through his head as he meets Yuri, who’s clapping and shaking his head again. At the net, Yuri hauls him in by the shirt and gets close _close_ and he thinks, oh. “What the fuck did you do to your knee?” Yuri growls at him and he thinks, _oh,_ wry.

Otabek just shrugs and pulls him in for a quick hug. Yuri runs his knuckles up his back, and he closes his eyes and tastes the salt on his own lips. One beautiful beat in his arms.

 

“Go, go, go!” Yuri shouts jovially, climbing onto the bike behind Otabek. Doesn’t matter how fast they go--fresh out of the trophy ceremony, all eyes are still on them.

Otabek still pulls out in a hurry and roars down the roads of Melbourne. Yuri’s up on his back all warm, knows how to lean with him now around curves. They ride along the Yarra, the city at dusk glowing in the water, park somewhere, and talk about nothing. 

“Does it always feel like that?” His second trophy ceremony felt as wonderfully surreal as the first.

Yuri’s hand, close to his on the seat of the bike, shrugs, and his fingers slip an inch nearer. His eyes grow greyer. “Like someone made a mistake, and they’re going to take the trophy out of your hands any moment?”

His breath sticks in his throat, and his eyes fall.

“Get over it,” Yuri says bitingly. “You worked for it. It’s yours. If it was all just a fluke, does all my hard work playing you mean nothing?”

“Of course it doesn’t.” Shock drags Otabek’s voice down low.

Yuri stares at him, but he seems to accept his answer. Turning, he puts his back to the bike, arms wound over his abdomen. 

Otabek breathes out, slow and measured. He offers, “I am enjoying my winning streak against you.”

“Two isn’t a _streak._ Don’t get comfortable,” Yuri warns. “I’m coming after you. Keep making finals and watch what happens when you get to the Wimbledon, hmm? I’ll kick your ass so hard your grandchildren won’t be able to sit down. Give you something to really be surprised about.”

“Hm.” Yuri pushes bony elbows push backwards into Otabek’s biceps as he threatens him, and nothing in the world could make Otabek move. “Yeah, could be fun.”

When Yuri tips his head back, the hair falling out of his bun brushes Otabek’s neck in mesmerizing tendrils. It feels like forgiveness. 

After they tour a couple sites of Melbourne, giving Yuri selfies to strew and the press material for listicles on athlete friendships, they both have to admit they’re drained and get ready to head home. 

As Otabek throws a leg over his bike, though, his right knee seizes. Stabbed again with agony. Going cold and then hot, Otabek shakes his head, frantic. “Can’t--”

Yuri places a cool hand on the back of his neck. “What kind of shit did you just play through?” The worry he must have been gulping back bursts out of him. “Otabek, I--we need to get you back to the hotel, okay? Or--or a hospital? I’m not a fucking doctor, I don’t know--”

Otabek grinds his teeth. “I’m not dying.”

Yuri’s rough hand ghosts his skin, light brows scrunching anxiously, and if Otabek were a different man, he might have played possum then and there. “We can call your coach.”

At that, Otabek shakes his head. He can’t see calling Doug with _just screwed up one of the most basic requirements for playing ATP tennis, two functioning legs_ going well. “Just back to the hotel.” He manages to straighten, but there’s no way he’ll be able to guide the bike with his knee like this. Digging his hand in his pocket, he unearths his key ring. Drops it Ted-first into Yuri’s unprepared palm.

Reflexes kicking in, Yuri catches it up in a jingle. “You want me to ride your bike?” His usually-deep voice rises into hysterics. “Without a license? When I’ve never done it before?”

Otabek tips his head in affirmation.

“Crazy bastard!” Yuri shakes the keys at him. “You want to get arrested in Australia? I bet their jails are full of venomous spiders. They’ll probably strip your title, too, insult to injury.” Yuri white-knuckles the keys and after a tight moment, exhales hard through his nose. “Careful climbing on.”

He’s able to position his knee better like this, feels like room temperature instead of white-hot blades digging under the cap. An even better balm is a grumbling Yuri in his arms. They joy-ride through Melbourne, Otabek shouting directions through mouthfuls of hair that escape from the second helmet he rented with Yuri in mind. 

Not champagne and fireworks, not quite, but he’ll never forget it.

 

Taking off his hat, Doug scratches his head. “I’m leaving this up to you, Otabek. I know it’s a rock and a hard place.”

Otabek nurses a protein shake and stares down at his knees. One bare under his shorts with brown skin marked with old scars and new scabs, the other wrapped in clay-flecked white bandages. He shakes his head.

To his credit, Doug doesn’t wipe off the drop of sweat that splashes onto his cheek. After practice today, where Otabek’s knee gave out and dumped him on the court, Doug insisted they have the conversation they haven’t been having about the 2019 season. Specifically, about the upcoming Davis Cup.

Otabek has seen serious improvement in his game. The remainder of this season showed further promise before the Australian Open. His knee is an unforeseen wrench in the works. While Otabek’s style works for him, it works by squeezing his body to the maximum, so he’s operating at less-than even with just one limb on the fritz.

This is a risk. If he doesn’t play three out of the four Davis Cups between 2016 and 2020, he can’t qualify to play the Tokyo Olympics. He’ll _have_ to go next year if he wants to play in Tokyo, and this time next year, it could be anything that holds him back. Otabek’s not a betting man, but this time, he’ll have to hang his hopes on the uncertain. This tendon gives out, his career tanks either way, and Kazakhstan absolutely won’t get the gold.

Otabek wraps his hand around his knee gently, like it’s someone else’s. “I’ll skip the Davis.”

“Get you some frozen peas, boy,” Doug says gruffly, and not a word more before he sees himself out.

Yuri takes it considerably less in stride when Otabek calls him about it (before he calls JJ because he wants someone to yell at him and then later for someone to be nice to him rather than the reverse). “What, and leave me to fend for myself with Baba and Moaning Myrtle?”

Otabek adjusts the stir-fry mix on his knee. He has a cold pack he should be using, but this is working miracles right now. “Didn’t work out with Chihuahua Community Theater?”

“He’s back with Anya, and it’s worse than before.” The sound of Yuri’s bath running. Practice wore him out, then, if he’s running a bath. “Have to go in a second. Your knee--it’s really bad?”

“It won’t be,” Otabek says resolutely, “when it matters.”

“Yeah?” Relief smooths Yuri’s voice. “Yeah. Always telling me what I want to hear.” It’s affection, not accusation. 

Otabek’s heart swells up too big, bumps around in his chest. Around it, he asks, “Vitya and Yuuri holding down the fort?” 

“Ow! Fuck!” Yuri must have bonked his head on the open door of the medicine cabinet. After his building refurbished the bathrooms on his floor, he’s always been doing that. “Ah...Vitya’s applying for, for Japanese citizenship.”

Along with banal bathroom furnishing facts, Otabek also has a keen knowledge of things like how Viktor Nikiforov has loomed in Yuri’s life for years, at once casting a shadow and providing a shelter. “Olympics?”

“Well, trying to get it before then, yes, so they can play for Japan together. It’s always been Katsuki’s dream, he never did get to play the Olympics for his country during his singles career.” Yuri’s doesn’t seem to have moved farther away from the phone, but his voice still sounds distant. “But I think--I think that’ll be it. For good.”

“Yura,” Otabek says softly, and Yuri rips a harsh noise out of his throat and mumbles, “I have to go.”

 _Wait,_ Otabek wants to say, but what could he say to make it better? They sit on the phone for a few seconds longer anyway, Otabek with his busted knee and Yuri with his emptying home courts, just breathing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys. so this fic has been finished since early july, and my original plan was to edit it weekly and post it weekly. as you all know, that uh, fell apart a bit. i kind of started hating this fic and saw editing it as a pointless chore. however, seeing as a few of you are still interested in seeing the rest of the fic, i'm gonna go ahead and post the rest of the fic as-is. 
> 
> it is a _very_ rough draft. please excuse any errors. i'm just ready to leave this monster behind in 2017. 
> 
> and this chapter is uh. freakishly long i think. oops. couldn't find a way to break it up.
> 
> anyway, happy new year, hope you enjoy!

“I’m never talking to you again.” Expression thunderous, Yuri sticks a leg up in the air.

“Talking to me right now.” So Yuri _did_ receive his birthday present(s). Otabek was unsure when Yuri didn’t message him about it. But Yuri is definitely wearing the pajama pants Otabek sent to him. The note, handwritten on a postcard from Saint Petersburg (Otabek is familiar with the animal called irony), says: _there is such thing as monkey print._ The pants, indeed, are printed with dancing monkeys.

“This is the last time.” Dropping his leg, Yuri folds his legs and grabs them to his chest. “These aside--” He gestures to his knee, lip curled. “I--liked your presents a lot. I can’t stop listening to those mixes,” he admits.

Otabek remixed a few songs he knew were Yuri’s favorites, plus had thrown in some of his own favorites he thought Yuri would like. He was more nervous about the CD he sent him than the stupid monkey pants. A joke present was one thing, a gift so personal and subjective another. 

“Did you read--” Otabek begins.

“One thing at a time! So impatient,” Yuri accuses, flopping back on his bed. Otabek can see a blister on his toe. “I will, I will. I like the copy you gave me. I like the cover.” Otabek found him a shinier, more modern copy of _Peter Pan_ than the one he’s owned since childhood.

He almost gave him his childhood copy, actually. But maybe that would have been too far. This is probably all ten steps too far.

“I figured you would,” he says lightly. “Shallow.”

Yuri gasps. “It’s my _birthday._ Okay, I mean it now--” His foot kicks up and with his heel, he bumps his laptop closed.

Otabek’s just picked up his phone to text him in mirthful disbelief that he followed through _for once_ (to this, Yuri has said before, “Have you seen your forehand? At least I _have_ a follow-through) when Yuri calls.

Yuri moves. “Anyway, I wanted to say thank you.” Says it so sincere Otabek’s pulse plinks against his ribcage. “I talk so much about myself all the time, and no one ever knows what to get me!”

“You’re picky,” Otabek says in fond reproach.

“I’m not!” Yuri insists. “I liked everything you gave me. I like--” He hesitates, and the silence trips along for a second too long.

Otabek clears his throat. “You know, you pull off those pants, and I’m not--” Yuri groans before he can say it. “--monkeying around.”

 

Otabek’s cutting down on his number of matches to give his knee breathing room before the slew of spring and summer clay tournaments, but he does need to keep playing hard courts to stay sharp and also to keep up his rankings. So here at the end of March, he’s playing the Miami Masters, which has been criticized for being a slow hard court in humid conditions--his turf, no doubt about it, and not just because the tournament’s practically in his backyard. 

He won’t see Yuri here, however. Yuri plans to play Cincinnati in September, complaining that the last thing he wants is to be in America on his nineteenth birthday, where he can’t even drink.

“But _I’m_ in America. Yura,” Otabek murmurs, playful.

“Which is why I’m making sure to be all the way on the other side of the world, _thank_ you,” Yuri shoots back, making Otabek smile to himself as he’s rewrapping his knee. 

“Where are you?” There’s a lot of what Otabek thinks is road noise.

“In my bathtub filled with rose petals, wearing nothing but pearls.” What Yuri is wearing is an audible shit-eating grin. “No. I’m driving back from Baba’s.”

“You got Yakov’s car fixed, then.” ‘Yakov’s car’ might be a loose term. Either way, the thing is a rustbucket being driven into the ground by its alternating drivers Yakov, Lilia, Yuri, and sometimes Viktor.

“No! This is my late birthday present to myself!” Scraping sounds and what Otabek hopes isn’t the screech of rubber on asphalt, and Yuri’s video-calling him.

Otabek picks up and finds he’s talking to swinging tennis ball and cat mirror charms. The phone jolts forward painfully with the vehicle’s motion. “You actually have a license?” 

Yuri ignores him with dignity. “You know I was holding out on buying a car…” Yuri sends all his savings back home to his only living family that matters to him, his grandfather. Most of his fashion is in fact on sale or sponsored, and he still budgets his groceries (a flash of fond memory: Yuri sitting knee drawn up at the kitchen counter making up his shopping list, pencil tucked into his hair despite the fact that he was putting the notes into his phone). “But then my grandfather told me that if I sent him any more money without buying my own car, he would buy one for me.” Yuri parks noisily and then the camera jiggles as he snatches up his phone. Otabek can finally see his face as he says, emphatic, “And I do not know or want to know what car Nikolai Plisetsky would have chosen for his grandson.”

Dryly, since he hasn’t seen much more of the car than the ceiling so far, Otabek asks, “What car did Yuri Plisetsky choose for himself?” 

“Hang on, hang on!” Yuri climbs out of the car and then turns the phone around to show off the car, sleek, shiny, and red as a Maraschino cherry. Folding back the passenger seat, he shows off the very nice interior, bending over and also showing off his very nice ass in some incredibly clingy jeans. “Look at this seat!”

Otabek presses back a smirk. “Which seat?” 

“I’m hanging up, Altin!” But Yuri walks up the stairs on Skype, camera shaking with every step, smooches Puma Tiger Scorpion on her fluffy head when Otabek asks him to pass on a kiss, and when Otabek has to sign off before his match, says, “Break a leg at Miami. The other leg.”

 

“Out!”

Nekola’s long legs are no match for Otabek’s trained sense of timing hitting the balls that come off of a clay court. He wins his semi in two sets, and while it’s not payback for his US Open loss yet, it’s getting there. Barcelona has a sentimental heft to it for Otabek, even though he notched more points with his Monte Carlo win.

In the finals against Yuri, he also wins in two sets. But they’re two much _trickier_ sets. Feels like every other game drags on past deuce. Yuri’s clay game is getting there--now he knows how to sweat out a point. He’ll be even more of a roadblock at Roland Garros. Stumbling through Duolingo Spanish at the trophy ceremony, Otabek looks over at Yuri and sees in his eyes the same anticipation he feels.

“You have something in your hair,” Yuri tells him as they sit in the cafe by Otabek’s hotel, leaning over with the dregs of his drink in his hand. The fingers of his free hand brush his bristly hair, short even with his undercut grown out, down towards his collar.

Dubious about his hair being long enough for something to get stuck in it even, he likes the hand in his hair, so he says nothing. Then he yelps as Yuri dumps ice down the back of his shirt. It’s with his back arched away from the cold--it’s a sunny April, but that startled Otabek just as much as Yuri, cackling, wanted--and face puckered, Yuri hovering over him, that JJ finds them.

Lowering his oversized shades, the rims of which match the absurdly airy scarf around his neck, JJ scrutinizes Yuri. “Hello, kitten! Am I interrupting something?”

Yuri straightens, stiffens. “Good guess.”

Otabek looks up at JJ, a question in his eyes.

JJ places a hand on Otabek’s shoulder, leans down, and he can see Yuri’s gaze _freeze._ “Sorry, sorry! Then you can carry on, but can I talk to you later, O?”

“I was just leaving.” Yuri balls up his napkin just as the waitress comes by to refresh his glass.

“Ah--later,” Otabek tells JJ in a hurry. “Yura, stay.”

JJ’s eyes bounce between them slowly. “Bye, kitten. I’ll text you,” he tells Otabek before for once, taking a hint and vanishing. 

“O?” Yuri asks acidly. 

“It used to be Big O,” Otabek says.

Yuri spits his drink.

He wonders what JJ wants, but it can wait. Against the rim of his cup, he insists, “He’s getting better.”

 

“--bek...bek…th--” Yuri’s breaking up horribly. Sometimes signal is a mythical concept in his apartment.

“I’ll have to move, Yuri, I can’t hear you at all,” Otabek enunciates down the line. Once he’s outside, cicadas chirping in his free ear, he informs him with amusement, “It sounded like you were calling me Bek-Bek.”

“Bek-Bek! That’s worse than O,” Yuri says like he’s won something. _”Bek-Bek._ Bekkers. Beks. Beko.”

Otabek makes a little retching sound. “Beky?” 

Malevolent, Yuri suggests, “Ots.”

Otabek is not uncritical. “Etymologically far-fetched. One out of ten.”

Put-out, Yuri’s mum for a moment, probably pouting. “In that list, you did not explore...Beka.”

“Like Rebecca?” Otabek shakes his head. For his own satisfaction--he knows Yuri can’t see it. It’s actually a legitimate diminutive. Like he’ll say that.

“Like Otabek. Like short for Otabek.” Yuri’s warming up to it now. “Beka.”

Otabek ponders it. “Three out of ten.”

Yuri makes staticky noises. “Oh--what’s that? You’re--krrh--breaking up, didn’t hear you.”

“The judges are taking a second vote.” Otabek’s always indulgent when he shouldn’t be. “Four.”

“Beka,” Yuri repeats. Otabek’s starting to get a bad feeling about this. “I’ll work you up to a six.”

 

The drums crash in his ears, and JJ _keeps trying to talk._ “What I was trying to tell you in Barcelona--”

“He can’t hear anything,” Isabella shouts over the noise of the Montreal concert that JJ sent him the birthday ticket to attend with them. Since they have been together, they happily invite Otabek out with them. When Otabek pointed out he was the third wheel, they _no-no-no_ -ed over him and each other and then JJ told him, “You’re like the third wheel on a tricycle,” and Isabella added, “You steer us” and he rolled his eyes but never objected again.

JJ yells back, “What?”

“He can’t hear anything!” Isabella repeats more loudly.

Otabek lays one hand on Isabella’s shoulder and the other over JJ’s mouth. JJ sticks his tongue disgustingly between Otabek’s fingers, and Otabek has to wipe his palm off on his shirt and bemoan his maturity, but he also stops shouting over the music.

When they get home and Isabella retreats to her room (they won’t share until after the wedding) to write, JJ pulls Otabek to sit on the sofa with him. He takes Otabek’s hands in his own suddenly, and Otabek stares at him. Is he going to lick it again?

“I have to talk to you,” JJ says, eyes round and shiny.

Otabek nods. He heard. Barely.

JJ wets his lips. “It’s serious.”

For one terrible second, Otabek thinks JJ is sick. Dying. The possibilities crowd his mind, and his hands tighten on JJ’s.

“I want you to…” JJ swallows, then tries for his usual bravado, chest puffing up. “I know it might take a lot of your time, but…”

“Anything,” Otabek tells him straight away, heart a fist in his chest.

In a rush, JJ says, “Will you be my best man.”

 _What._ Anger at the false path of anxiety JJ inadvertently led him down. And then--joy. Matured, yes, still the same joy he felt the first time JJ walked over to him in Montreal, the best player among the kids there, mouthy but already putting his money where his mouth was, and asked the short kid who couldn’t hold a conversation in English or French to be his practice doubles partner. Joy wrapping up his heart and throat in a bow.

“Don’t just sit there like that.” JJ shakes Otabek’s arms. “If you say no, I’ll--I can figure out someone else, it’s a big commitment, it does not have to be an obligation--”

“Honor,” Otabek manages like he still doesn’t know how to speak the right language. Extracting his hands from JJ’s with difficulty, he grabs his shoulders and squeezes. “It would be an honor.”

“For me!” JJ says, eyes crinkling. He claps Otabek on the biceps, then changes his mind and rocks him in a hug that has Otabek dropping pretense, too, and grinning into his shoulder.

Isabella comes to plug her laptop into the printer in the kitchen once they’ve peeled apart, two grown men tilting their heads back so they don’t cry like kids, and she plops a box of tissues between them. “You’re a mess,” she says kindly. “Thank you, Otabek. JJ will give you all the _useful_ details later.”

 

To his relief, his knee holds up at the French Open after a scare in Round 2. Last year he came to Paris without a major to his name, and while he badly wanted it, there was no real _pressure_ like French, Australian, world number two put on him. His actions are being analyzed more closely now, his earlier round matches something of note. 

He’s being watched, and he senses it.

“I knew what we were getting into when we started this, but--” Evgenia gives a shuddering sigh down the line. “I just want to ride down the street on her bike. With my arms around her.”

It’s not a big ask, and not a surprise.

That morning, Lauren filled the groupchat with pictures of her rainbow-decked motorcycle in preparation for the parade in a week. She’s ridden with Dykes on Bikes since she was legally old enough. It _does_ look fun. But Otabek knows that Evgenia really just wants to see her long-time girlfriend.

Thinking of the fizziness that builds in him when he knows he’ll see Yuri in a week, he understands.

It’s an easy enough decision. He has an hour before he has to get down to the courts, even. “Call you back.”

“Otabek,” Evgenia rages through her tears. “Hey--” Her upset is within reason; Otabek offered a call to comfort her after he realized how wistful she was, and now he’s leaving when he said he had half an hour to talk. But she’ll understand soon.

When he next checks the time, he has ten minutes before his taxi arrives. Otabek is _never_ late. He dashes around dressing, grabs his bag, out the door.

Yuri’s hair is in a tight bun, he’s wearing violet, and he means business. His handshake at the net feels finger-breaking. The crowd’s already at fever pitch.

“Davai,” Otabek says a hair before Yuri can. The text Yuri sent him before the match most assuredly does not count.

“Davai, _Beka,”_ Yuri snaps back like he’s supposed to be anything but endeared.

In the first set, Yuri is a whirlwind, and there’s nothing Otabek can do about it. Yuri soars across the court, slaps balls out of the air with a near-inhuman reach. His feet eat up the ground, and he chews up and spits out Otabek’s backhands. He wins 6-2.

Otabek picks compulsively at his racquet grip. What is he doing _wrong?_ A hundred things. He’s been hitting off-balance while Yuri always picks his poise back up before a shot. His shoddy service allows repeated breaks. This set has to be different.

In the next set, Otabek tries hard not to let Yuri gain ground. That’s his mistake. He’s not trying to rush the lines himself, he’s just down in the trenches, trying not to get shot. Yuri breaks him his first service game. Otabek can’t break back. Otabek is tailing at 3-4, and it’s Yuri’s serve.

Yuri attempts an ace, hits a fault. As a result, his second serve is easy pickings.

Otabek runs straight after it, makes contact--his racquet position seems all right, the ball seems like it should be inside the lines. It lands so clearly out that Otabek doesn’t even entertain challenging it. 

The second set also goes to Yuri.

He’s down two sets at a Grand Slam tournament. His prospects are not looking the best. While he might be able to win the next set, but he’ll have to take this match to the exhausting fifth set to win.

Nothing for it. After he inspects his knee at the break, he allows himself to turn his head just enough that Yuri isn’t merely in his periphery. He fears that when he’s on the back foot, looking at Yuri, who thus far at this tournament has played flawless tennis, will only demoralize him. Nonetheless, look he does. 

One of Yuri’s light brows rises with architectural grace, and sweat glistens off his cheekbones. _What are you going to do about it?_ his eyes ask.

Otabek knows what he’s going to do about it. 2-6, 4-6, that doesn’t reflect what he can do. How he can work the clay. How he can bend his will to it. It’s a repeat of last year, but it’s _embarrassing_ now, doesn’t feel like victory from the jaws of defeat, just feels like a slow start when he should be able to keep up by now. Rolling out his arms, rolling his head from side to side, Otabek prepares to serve.

He pushes. Pushes. Pushes. Pushes. Scrapes by with a skin-of-his-teeth 7-6, and he earns the right to play the fourth set.

The fourth set, this is where his long rallies become a double-edged sword. The end he cuts Yuri with is decidedly sharper. Otabek has greater muscle mass and greater endurance. Yuri can end points fast on winners, but the longer a point goes, the more unforced errors he makes. Otabek breaks Yuri for the first time in the match.

But he is still Yuri Plisetsky. In long bounds across the court, he comes up to the net and delivers a mouth-watering slice, hand off, racquet cutting the air and ball rotating improbably away. He breaks Otabek back.

5-5. Otabek needs this fifth set. Needs this win. He has to take risks. Bowing back for his serve, he gives it all he has, and the ball flies and bounces fast. It’s an unreturnable serve. An _ace._

Yuri’s mouth drops open, which maybe should be insulting but really is flattering, and Otabek has to gulp back guttural surprise himself. Cameras probably pick up a _gah_ all the same.

With Otabek up 6-5 and Yuri serving, Yuri dances up to the net on his toes, volleys, volleys, and Otabek shoots down every single one. At the end of that point, the crowds roar. 

Yuri’s tiring now, and when Otabek swipes him from corner to corner, he can’t quite return every ball. Otabek hits a backhand that wouldn’t quite be a winner at Yuri’s best. In his current state, he can’t return it. That was forty-thirty, and now that’s the game.

Two sets apiece. Anyone’s game going into the fifth set. Deja vu. That will _not_ be missed by fans.

Yuri’s head droops forward. Sweat droplets roll off his nape, and escaped hair sticks to his skin. That summer-pink. He looks tired, but there’s no tension in his lips. They’re soft, somehow, like even if he’s losing he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. When he was ten, could he have imagined this? Otabek couldn’t.

Otabek breaks Yuri’s first service game. Then he has to hang on for dear life. He remembers what Yuri said, about that demon that must have possessed Chulanont. But Yuri _is_ the demon. He’s hit his second wind, must have filled his lungs with a renewed dose of life. Because he’s faster now than Otabek remembers him even being in the first set. Darts and dives, blurry purple fish in a red clay sea. 

Otabek is up 5-4 and serving. He doesn’t really understand how. The heat sledgehammers him. And Otabek forges onward. His first serve at fifteen-thirty is so weak that it’s like a particularly battered second. Yuri leaps on it, returns, Otabek returns again, and Yuri’s answering shot splits the air past Otabek’s ear like a bullet. The umpire calls it out, and Yuri challenges. Breathless seconds, palpable prayer in the air. 

It’s in. 

Fifteen- _forty._ That messes Otabek up so much that he double-faults. Yuri has broken him back and retrieved Otabek’s stolen advantage. God. God, Yuri’s good. 5-5.

Now there are one of two options. Someone holds their service and breaks the other’s, or they both hold and they take it to a tiebreak.

Yuri’s serve. His serve goes long. His serve goes wide. Otabek returns his shaky second serves, and when Yuri tries to swing him up to the service line, Otabek pounds him back behind the baseline. It goes to thirty-forty. Screw his knee. Otabek jumps high for an overhead. Not the work of art that Yuri’s is, but it does the job, and he wins the game.

Yuri raps his racquet against his hip. Turns his face skyward, and the sun falls on him so he looks like a column of light himself. Of course.

As much as Otabek loves to play Yuri, he’s singularly infuriating. 

Serving on 6-5 puts pressure on Otabek’s serve. In the eleventh hour, he double faults twice. Everything feels surreal, the air like glue, sticking to him, weighing him down. His knee twinges. Then it’s the last headlong push of the game, as he’s serving on forty-thirty. And his forehand misfires, landing so soft Yuri tears it to shreds with a winner Otabek almost handed him on a silver platter.

Deuce.

Otabek can dance this dance. 

Ad Altin.

Deuce. 

Ad Plisetsky. 

Deuce. 

Ad Plisetsky. Skidding forward, Otabek scoops a ball out of the air and his shot makes it bounce right around Yuri’s feet. Yuri has to jerk awkwardly to return it, and the ball goes a whole lot of nowhere. 

Deuce. 

Yuri makes an unforced error. Ad Altin. Yuri hits a beautiful forehand. Deuce. 

Another unforced error, unexpectedly spotty gameplay for Yuri. Ad Altin.

Otabek plays one long point, and Yuri skitters back and forth for the ball, but as he’s making to run to the other side of the court, Otabek hits down the line. Yuri’s momentum carries him too far forward to turn back in time. Yuri gets centimeters from the ground, yet he doesn’t wipe out. He doesn’t reach the ball, either. It bounces back to the fence, and the ball-boy scrambles out of the way just in time.

Ad Altin. Wait. No. That’s the game, that’s the set, that’s the match. 

“Three for three,” Otabek mumbles to Yuri at the net, ready to collapse.

Yuri grunts, sounding more like Yakov than anything. Fumbling over Otabek’s shoulder, he grabs something on the back of his shirt. Yanks. The--tag? “Your shirt’s inside out.”

Before Otabek lifts his second Coupes des Mousquetaires, he makes sure to zip his jacket up.

They’re both in need of a shower, and Yuri wants a nap. They mutually agree over text during the press round to meet tomorrow morning whenever they wake up for a half-day together. Otabek’s a little disappointed. More than a little. 

Still, riding the wave of his win, a freshly-showered Otabek flops down onto his bed face-first and finally calls Evgenia back. “Did you get my email, Zhenya?”

“Beks, are you serious?” Evgenia shrieks so loud Otabek’s ears ring after he hangs up.

He scrolls in the excitement-clogged group-chat so he can see her, cheeks mascara-streaked, holding up a flight itinerary to see Lauren in one week.

 

Otabek’s quads are killing him. Panting, he half-sags over the bars of the stationary bike and clicks a picture of the odometer. _Goal for you tomorrow,_ he tells Yuri.

_fuuuk  
thought i had u today_

The count Yuri sends him then _is_ high, but Otabek is competitive. 

His knee’s improved significantly, and he’s tired of being restricted to swimming and other exercise gentle on his joints. His physical therapist and personal trainer have reluctantly okayed him to expand his off-court repertoire again, though they probably would not approve of his contests with Yuri. Another plus is that listening to his own mixes while he works out means that he can come back and refine them later. 

“Wait, wait, I wasn’t ready!” Yuri says when Otabek returns to his apartment and Skypes him. 

“Then why pick up?” Otabek indicates his headphones. “I’ll call tomorrow, then.” He’s DJing tonight.

Yuri speed-walks back over to his laptop. “Well, don’t be like _that.”_ He’s wearing the tiniest bicycle shorts, and his thighs ripple powerfully as he puts one foot up on his chair and unlaces his sneakers. Not as flashy as his court shoes. What’s more of interest is his shirt, something on the front that Otabek can’t see. 

Otabek points in question.

“Ah--” Yuri sighs and angles his shoulder. “It’s nothing.”

Leaning back, Otabek crosses his arms. He’s not letting Yuri get away with this one _that_ easily.

“Look, I liked _one_ fan theory on Twitter…” Yuri’s muscles flex as he stretches, one long elegant line. It’s distracting, but not enough to throw him off the scent. “Fine. No laughing.”

“I never laugh,” Otabek says, straight-faced. 

Standing, Yuri pulls his shirt straight so that Otabek can see it. Screen-printed on it is the face of a brown tabby cat and in big letters below, _TIGERCLAW WAS RIGHT._ “An Angel sent it to me.” He looks down at it, expression disdainful. “Whatever. It’s just workout clothes.”

Otabek clicks his tongue, disappointed. “You’re going to the Dark Forest for that.”

Yuri’s the one to laugh, flopping down in his chair. Resting his chin on crossed arms, he sighs, “It’s stupid, right?”

“It’s creative.” Otabek shrugs. “If you don’t like it…”

At that, Yuri’s eyes widen and he covers the cat face with both his hands. “Hey, get your own!” Leave aside that it’s _Otabek’s_ wardrobe that’s slowly dwindling from sticky fingers (he often leaves a tournament where he sees Yuri with a suitcase lighter than he packed).

 

“You look good together,” Michael shouts over the sound of gunfire from the video game they’re playing that Otabek is failing at so badly that Michael can beat him while simultaneously browsing the ATP World Tour website.

“ _Not_ the point of a head-to-head statistics comparison,” Otabek points out just before he gets a squelchy shot to the gut. 

“Those statistics look good, too.” Onscreen, Evgenia takes a swipe at Michael.

“Ooh, catfight!” Michael exclaims just before Evgenia mows him down. “Hey…”

Evgenia laughs and throws her controller down on her mattress. Sitting up, she stretches, partially out of the webcam frame. “You and Plisetsky are Scorpio and Pisces, Otabek. You know what that means?”

“No,” Otabek says, setting down his own controller and adjusting his laptop, “and don’t tell me.” He fights with the lower half of his face unsuccessfully against a yawn.

“You never even let me do your full natal chart,” Evgenia complains.

Michael screws up his fine-boned face. “Uh, his _what?_ ” 

“ _Star signs._ ” Evgenia looks scandalized at having to explain. “Of all sign combinations, Scorpio and Pisces have the most sexual chemistry. You know? Sparks!”

“Ooh,” Michael jeers. “Hey, Zhen, speaking of chemistry, have you seen all those rumors about you and Beks?”

“Rumors?” 

_”What?”_

Michael sends them links to articles where people have gone digging through Otabek’s friends’ Instagrams for pictures of them together, and some idiot has romantically linked Evgenia and Otabek. Several idiots. “I guess they didn’t go far back enough for anything with Andre?” 

On Otabek’s phone, there are still a few pictures of him and Andre with his smiling dark face and arm around Otabek. A reminder, but not a particularly painful one. It’s not unlikely that they’re somewhere on the internet as well.

“They missed all the pictures of me with K from this summer, too,” Evgenia says, exasperated. “I am...too gay for this.”

So is Otabek.

“Are you going to say something?” asks Michael.

Frowning, Otabek considers it. “No.” He looks to Evgenia for her perspective because unbelievably, it’s the two of them churning in the gossip mill.

“Anything he says will only feed the rumor-mongers.” Evgenia pushes her masses of hair over one shoulder and gives Otabek a long look. “And Otabek is not ready to be out.”

For that, Otabek has no response. Guilt squirms in his stomach again.

Michael jumps back in with, “What about you and Lauren, Zhen, what are your signs?”

Evgenia sits up straighter. Studies her nails. “Michael, you wouldn’t know a Virgo from a Leo anyway, so why ask?”

Disloyally, Otabek says, “Lauren is a Gemini.” 

Evgenia gasps in betrayal, and Michael snickers despite not knowing what any of it means because that’s who he is as a person.

[[chapter break?]]

Yuri runs up to the net for a volley, killer on grass, and Otabek dashes up to catch it on his racquet. The ball’s so short and Yuri’s _right there_ \--he returns a winner over Otabek’s shoulder.

Tilting his head to the side, Otabek gives him a wry look, watches his eyes sparkle.

Yuri plucked the first set 6-3. With significantly more pushing and shoving, Otabek took the second set 7-6. Yuri’s gunning for his third Wimbledon title, and Otabek wants his first.

When Otabek drags out a point, he’ll still usually win it. But Yuri will be all the fiercer the next point. More impatient. Sometimes he hits winners, but often his unforced errors occur on those points, when he’ll step in a bit too much or swing with too much force for his position in the court. 

When serving on 4-4, Otabek’s serve wobbles, and Yuri pounces and breaks him, going on to win the third set 6-4.

The fourth set tiebreak lasts forever. Finally, when Otabek’s busy trying to drag Yuri back and forth across the grass in his barely-Wimbledon-regulation black-on-white cheetah print tennis shoes for another agonizingly lengthy point, a fed-up Yuri pulls out his beautiful overhead, and that’s that.

Still, it was a grass court, a fast court, and Otabek gave Yuri a _fight._ His style has evolved to more versatility, certainly.

He watches Yuri’s white teeth go around the metal, and he almost smiles.

 

“Was that a smile, Otabek?” Viktor gives him a big, ridiculous grin, showing him the trophy ceremony shot Yuri retweeted. “But why the smile when you lost?”

Otabek almost almost-smiles again. He means well.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says without looking up from his dinner, and Viktor quails.

This Wimbledon has been a _good_ one for Russians, as evidenced by the Twitter feed Viktor keeps scrolling through in front of Otabek’s face. Mila in bubblegum pink lifted the ladies’ singles first place trophy, the Rosewater Dish, and a still-besotted Viktor and Yuuri, dogged by the kiss from last year and playing right through it, walked away with the men’s doubles runner-up trophy.

When Yuri tugs his arm, Otabek willingly resettles closer to his side again. “How was my serve?” he asks conspiratorially. 

Mila looks over at them and then looks away again, asking Yuuri something about Makkachin, eager to catch up with the now Japan-residing poodle. Mila’s impressive serve clocks speeds only men can typically reach.

“Eh.” Yuri steals a mushroom off of Otabek’s plate. “It could be paired with a better volley.”

Conscious of the cameras on them, Otabek looks straight ahead and murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Yuri stamps on his toes, hard.

“You know,” Viktor muses, swirling his wine in his glass, and Yuri jerks, caught-out, like subtlety is a foreign invention. Too in his head to notice, Viktor leans forward and says, “Now we have won the same number of singles’ Wimbledon titles.”

“Singles’?” Yuri smirks. “We have also won the same number of Wimbledon doubles’ titles.”

Offended, especially when he can see Mila nibbling back a laugh, Viktor says, “I was only going to say, you could easily outdo that number.”

“I know.” Nevertheless, there’s something about the way Yuri pushes his food around his plate for a moment, looking down at it, and perhaps a hint of pink in his cheeks, that says it means more to him than he’s letting on right now.

“I met him when he was a kid, just thirteen, _so_ cute, you can’t imagine,” Viktor enthuses to Otabek, who probably can’t imagine. “Yakov says to Yura, he asks him, ‘Would you like to be like Viktor Nikiforov one day?’ and Yura says, ‘I’m going to be better than him.’” His eyes shine as he speaks, and reaching across the table, Viktor squeezes Yuri’s shoulder.

“Your shirt is getting in my soup, old man,” Yuri seethes.

Helpfully, Otabek passes over his own unsullied bowl, and Mila scoots Yuri’s bowl over to herself.

Looking helplessly between the three, Yuri protests, “That’s fucking not what I--”

“Just accept our love,” Mila coos, and Otabek places a hand on his knee under the table where no one can see.

Yuri goes quiet and red-faced.

 

“And then I told Baba,” Yuri says, leaning a shoulder against the lockers and gesturing in the corner of Otabek’s eyes, “I don’t care what you say, she’s one to watch out for with how she can up the difficulty of her routines to win.” Otabek dutifully watches the figure-skating clips Yuri sends him, but he only follows the sport as much as Yuri texts him updates. “I still think she was underscored at the Olympics.”

After Otabek’s semifinal in Cincinnati against Giacometti, which went swimmingly, 6-2, 6-2, he’s in the locker room, picking apart the double knots on his laces. In here, it’s loud, the walls not quite isolating them from the roar of the crowd.

“Her triple-triple combo is sick as hell. And her catch-foot layback--” Yuri pokes Otabek’s left knee with his toe. “Are you even listening?” 

Surprised, Otabek looks up at him after he shoves his feet in his shoes. “I’m always listening, Yura.” 

That brings Yuri up short. He narrows his eyes.

Otabek shrugs. “Sometimes I just like to hear you talk.” 

Yuri’s mouth does something complicated. “Come back to my room, and we’ll rewatch her SP again.” Grabbing Otabek’s bag, Yuri slings it over his free shoulder. Then he takes Otabek by the wrist, fingers delicate in their command. Only when they emerge into the sun does he let go.

 

Otabek bounces the ball twice, comes up to serve. A shout of _Altin!_ startles him, and he bounces the ball twice more, turning his head.

After a strict word from the umpire, the crowds quiet.

Otabek lands his first serve. He’s at forty-fifteen, and while he hasn’t broken yet, he’s confident this time, confident with the level of his game. 

Down the line, JJ fires off a backhand, and Otabek meets it with a big forehand. JJ whips it back across. Otabek hits the ball almost right between his legs back at the baseline, and it’s in, unreturnable.

What a difference this is from the semifinals of the last US Open. JJ’s game has improved. Arguably, he’s playing better than when he won the 2016 US Open. 

Still, JJ begins to doubt himself. It shows in his stroke-making. There’s not so much power, and everything is too straightforward for Otabek. Every time, he can reach the ball and return it faster with his own angle on it, controlling the progress of the points. 

His serve is starting to deteriorate as well. He might have a worst first-serve percentage than Otabek at this stage, which Otabek thinks is something of an _achievement._

Otabek wants JJ at his best. He wants to play his best friend like he did when they were children, when winning every point off of JJ was something sweet.

It’s not to say that JJ is bad. Indeed, even in his uncertainty, clear insecurity at this point in the match, he’s playing better than anyone Otabek has faced in previous tournaments.

JJ serves the last game of the match. At thirty-all, Otabek runs expectantly after the ball, then returns it, hand flying off the racquet grip almost faster than he can think. JJ returns something unconvincing, and Otabek trounces him. 

Down thirty-forty, JJ takes a long time with his first serve. Long. He serves again, and once more, the ball skids off into the painted court. A double fault.

Painful, humiliating, and this semifinal win isn’t the one Otabek really wanted. The man looks completely defeated. Otabek clasps his shoulder at the net, JJ’s smile a weak shadow.

Tomorrow is Otabek’s grace day before the final with Yuri, so he can technically stay up somewhat, though what he most likes to do is spend the day doing light exercise and eating well, not nursing a hangover.

JJ’s outstripping him, though. He signals to the bartender for another. “King JJ is dethroned,” he says mournfully to Otabek.

“The semifinals of a _major,_ ” Otabek reminds him.

“A major failure!” JJ says. “Ah.” He sinks his head into his hands. 

Otabek stares at JJ’s profile, not sure what to say. 

“It’s you and Princess Plisetsky’s game now. You’re third-wheeling the whole tennis world,” JJ declares, slumping back in his chair.

Otabek frowns, especially at _Princess._

“It was a good run.” JJ clasps a hand over his heart with a drunken sigh. “It was a good run, Leroy.”

“You’re competition,” Otabek tells him.

JJ chuckles.

Otabek shakes his head and says honestly,“Can't believe that I beat you.”

“What?” It’s a distraction for JJ, Otabek’s suggestion that he didn’t deserve to win. “O! You played so well!”

Otabek raises his eyebrows, thumps JJ’s back. “So did you.”

Coughing a little, JJ nonetheless concedes the point. “You think Bella will want to marry a guy who hasn’t won a major title since 2016?” he asks the bottom of his drink.

After he looks up, Otabek looks at him seriously in the face. “JJ, Isabella _still_ doesn’t know anything about tennis.”

JJ accidentally snorts his drink up his nose, then laughs with the air of tired hysterics. Otabek goes to get him another drink on his tab and makes sure to tell the bartender to water it down, sure JJ is too far gone to notice.

When JJ’s slumped over the bar top, bleary, Otabek goes to pick up the tab.

“I’m never talking to you again.” Expression thunderous, Yuri sticks a leg up in the air.

“Talking to me right now.” So Yuri _did_ receive his birthday present(s). Otabek was unsure when Yuri didn’t message him about it. But Yuri is definitely wearing the pajama pants Otabek sent to him. The note, handwritten on a postcard from Saint Petersburg (Otabek is familiar with the animal called irony), says: _there is such thing as monkey print._ The pants, indeed, are printed with dancing monkeys.

“This is the last time.” Dropping his leg, Yuri folds his legs and grabs them to his chest. “These aside--” He gestures to his knee, lip curled. “I--liked your presents a lot. I can’t stop listening to those mixes,” he admits.

Otabek remixed a few songs he knew were Yuri’s favorites, plus had thrown in some of his own favorites he thought Yuri would like. He was more nervous about the CD he sent him than the stupid monkey pants. A joke present was one thing, a gift so personal and subjective another. 

“Did you read--” Otabek begins.

“One thing at a time! So impatient,” Yuri accuses, flopping back on his bed. Otabek can see a blister on his toe. “I will, I will. I like the copy you gave me. I like the cover.” Otabek found him a shinier, more modern copy of _Peter Pan_ than the one he’s owned since childhood.

He almost gave him his childhood copy, actually. But maybe that would have been too far. This is probably all ten steps too far.

“I figured you would,” he says lightly. “Shallow.”

Yuri gasps. “It’s my _birthday._ Okay, I mean it now--” His foot kicks up and with his heel, he bumps his laptop closed.

Otabek’s just picked up his phone to text him in mirthful disbelief that he followed through _for once_ (to this, Yuri has said before, “Have you seen your forehand? At least I _have_ a follow-through) when Yuri calls.

Yuri moves. “Anyway, I wanted to say thank you.” Says it so sincere Otabek’s pulse plinks against his ribcage. “I talk so much about myself all the time, and no one ever knows what to get me!”

“You’re picky,” Otabek says in fond reproach.

“I’m not!” Yuri insists. “I liked everything you gave me. I like--” He hesitates, and the silence trips along for a second too long.

Otabek clears his throat. “You know, you pull off those pants, and I’m not--” Yuri groans before he can say it. “--monkeying around.”

 

Otabek’s cutting down on his number of matches to give his knee breathing room before the slew of spring and summer clay tournaments, but he does need to keep playing hard courts to stay sharp and also to keep up his rankings. So here at the end of March, he’s playing the Miami Masters, which has been criticized for being a slow hard court in humid conditions--his turf, no doubt about it, and not just because the tournament’s practically in his backyard. 

He won’t see Yuri here, however. Yuri plans to play Cincinnati in September, complaining that the last thing he wants is to be in America on his nineteenth birthday, where he can’t even drink.

“But _I’m_ in America. Yura,” Otabek murmurs, playful.

“Which is why I’m making sure to be all the way on the other side of the world, _thank_ you,” Yuri shoots back, making Otabek smile to himself as he’s rewrapping his knee. 

“Where are you?” There’s a lot of what Otabek thinks is road noise.

“In my bathtub filled with rose petals, wearing nothing but pearls.” What Yuri is wearing is an audible shit-eating grin. “No. I’m driving back from Baba’s.”

“You got Yakov’s car fixed, then.” ‘Yakov’s car’ might be a loose term. Either way, the thing is a rustbucket being driven into the ground by its alternating drivers Yakov, Lilia, Yuri, and sometimes Viktor.

“No! This is my late birthday present to myself!” Scraping sounds and what Otabek hopes isn’t the screech of rubber on asphalt, and Yuri’s video-calling him.

Otabek picks up and finds he’s talking to swinging tennis ball and cat mirror charms. The phone jolts forward painfully with the vehicle’s motion. “You actually have a license?” 

Yuri ignores him with dignity. “You know I was holding out on buying a car…” Yuri sends all his savings back home to his only living family that matters to him, his grandfather. Most of his fashion is in fact on sale or sponsored, and he still budgets his groceries (a flash of fond memory: Yuri sitting knee drawn up at the kitchen counter making up his shopping list, pencil tucked into his hair despite the fact that he was putting the notes into his phone). “But then my grandfather told me that if I sent him any more money without buying my own car, he would buy one for me.” Yuri parks noisily and then the camera jiggles as he snatches up his phone. Otabek can finally see his face as he says, emphatic, “And I do not know or want to know what car Nikolai Plisetsky would have chosen for his grandson.”

Dryly, since he hasn’t seen much more of the car than the ceiling so far, Otabek asks, “What car did Yuri Plisetsky choose for himself?” 

“Hang on, hang on!” Yuri climbs out of the car and then turns the phone around to show off the car, sleek, shiny, and red as a Maraschino cherry. Folding back the passenger seat, he shows off the very nice interior, bending over and also showing off his very nice ass in some incredibly clingy jeans. “Look at this seat!”

Otabek presses back a smirk. “Which seat?” 

“I’m hanging up, Altin!” But Yuri walks up the stairs on Skype, camera shaking with every step, smooches Puma Tiger Scorpion on her fluffy head when Otabek asks him to pass on a kiss, and when Otabek has to sign off before his match, says, “Break a leg at Miami. The other leg.”

 

“Out!”

Nekola’s long legs are no match for Otabek’s trained sense of timing hitting the balls that come off of a clay court. He wins his semi in two sets, and while it’s not payback for his US Open loss yet, it’s getting there. Barcelona has a sentimental heft to it for Otabek, even though he notched more points with his Monte Carlo win.

In the finals against Yuri, he also wins in two sets. But they’re two much _trickier_ sets. Feels like every other game drags on past deuce. Yuri’s clay game is getting there--now he knows how to sweat out a point. He’ll be even more of a roadblock at Roland Garros. Stumbling through Duolingo Spanish at the trophy ceremony, Otabek looks over at Yuri and sees in his eyes the same anticipation he feels.

“You have something in your hair,” Yuri tells him as they sit in the cafe by Otabek’s hotel, leaning over with the dregs of his drink in his hand. The fingers of his free hand brush his bristly hair, short even with his undercut grown out, down towards his collar.

Dubious about his hair being long enough for something to get stuck in it even, he likes the hand in his hair, so he says nothing. Then he yelps as Yuri dumps ice down the back of his shirt. It’s with his back arched away from the cold--it’s a sunny April, but that startled Otabek just as much as Yuri, cackling, wanted--and face puckered, Yuri hovering over him, that JJ finds them.

Lowering his oversized shades, the rims of which match the absurdly airy scarf around his neck, JJ scrutinizes Yuri. “Hello, kitten! Am I interrupting something?”

Yuri straightens, stiffens. “Good guess.”

Otabek looks up at JJ, a question in his eyes.

JJ places a hand on Otabek’s shoulder, leans down, and he can see Yuri’s gaze _freeze._ “Sorry, sorry! Then you can carry on, but can I talk to you later, O?”

“I was just leaving.” Yuri balls up his napkin just as the waitress comes by to refresh his glass.

“Ah--later,” Otabek tells JJ in a hurry. “Yura, stay.”

JJ’s eyes bounce between them slowly. “Bye, kitten. I’ll text you,” he tells Otabek before for once, taking a hint and vanishing. 

“O?” Yuri asks acidly. 

“It used to be Big O,” Otabek says.

Yuri spits his drink.

He wonders what JJ wants, but it can wait. Against the rim of his cup, he insists, “He’s getting better.”

 

“--bek...bek…th--” Yuri’s breaking up horribly. Sometimes signal is a mythical concept in his apartment.

“I’ll have to move, Yuri, I can’t hear you at all,” Otabek enunciates down the line. Once he’s outside, cicadas chirping in his free ear, he informs him with amusement, “It sounded like you were calling me Bek-Bek.”

“Bek-Bek! That’s worse than O,” Yuri says like he’s won something. _”Bek-Bek._ Bekkers. Beks. Beko.”

Otabek makes a little retching sound. “Beky?” 

Malevolent, Yuri suggests, “Ots.”

Otabek is not uncritical. “Etymologically far-fetched. One out of ten.”

Put-out, Yuri’s mum for a moment, probably pouting. “In that list, you did not explore...Beka.”

“Like Rebecca?” Otabek shakes his head. For his own satisfaction--he knows Yuri can’t see it. It’s actually a legitimate diminutive. Like he’ll say that.

“Like Otabek. Like short for Otabek.” Yuri’s warming up to it now. “Beka.”

Otabek ponders it. “Three out of ten.”

Yuri makes staticky noises. “Oh--what’s that? You’re--krrh--breaking up, didn’t hear you.”

“The judges are taking a second vote.” Otabek’s always indulgent when he shouldn’t be. “Four.”

“Beka,” Yuri repeats. Otabek’s starting to get a bad feeling about this. “I’ll work you up to a six.”

 

The drums crash in his ears, and JJ _keeps trying to talk._ “What I was trying to tell you in Barcelona--”

“He can’t hear anything,” Isabella shouts over the noise of the Montreal concert that JJ sent him the birthday ticket to attend with them. Since they have been together, they happily invite Otabek out with them. When Otabek pointed out he was the third wheel, they _no-no-no_ -ed over him and each other and then JJ told him, “You’re like the third wheel on a tricycle,” and Isabella added, “You steer us” and he rolled his eyes but never objected again.

JJ yells back, “What?”

“He can’t hear anything!” Isabella repeats more loudly.

Otabek lays one hand on Isabella’s shoulder and the other over JJ’s mouth. JJ sticks his tongue disgustingly between Otabek’s fingers, and Otabek has to wipe his palm off on his shirt and bemoan his maturity, but he also stops shouting over the music.

When they get home and Isabella retreats to her room (they won’t share until after the wedding) to write, JJ pulls Otabek to sit on the sofa with him. He takes Otabek’s hands in his own suddenly, and Otabek stares at him. Is he going to lick it again?

“I have to talk to you,” JJ says, eyes round and shiny.

Otabek nods. He heard. Barely.

JJ wets his lips. “It’s serious.”

For one terrible second, Otabek thinks JJ is sick. Dying. The possibilities crowd his mind, and his hands tighten on JJ’s.

“I want you to…” JJ swallows, then tries for his usual bravado, chest puffing up. “I know it might take a lot of your time, but…”

“Anything,” Otabek tells him straight away, heart a fist in his chest.

In a rush, JJ says, “Will you be my best man.”

 _What._ Anger at the false path of anxiety JJ inadvertently led him down. And then--joy. Matured, yes, still the same joy he felt the first time JJ walked over to him in Montreal, the best player among the kids there, mouthy but already putting his money where his mouth was, and asked the short kid who couldn’t hold a conversation in English or French to be his practice doubles partner. Joy wrapping up his heart and throat in a bow.

“Don’t just sit there like that.” JJ shakes Otabek’s arms. “If you say no, I’ll--I can figure out someone else, it’s a big commitment, it does not have to be an obligation--”

“Honor,” Otabek manages like he still doesn’t know how to speak the right language. Extracting his hands from JJ’s with difficulty, he grabs his shoulders and squeezes. “It would be an honor.”

“For me!” JJ says, eyes crinkling. He claps Otabek on the biceps, then changes his mind and rocks him in a hug that has Otabek dropping pretense, too, and grinning into his shoulder.

Isabella comes to plug her laptop into the printer in the kitchen once they’ve peeled apart, two grown men tilting their heads back so they don’t cry like kids, and she plops a box of tissues between them. “You’re a mess,” she says kindly. “Thank you, Otabek. JJ will give you all the _useful_ details later.”

 

To his relief, his knee holds up at the French Open after a scare in Round 2. Last year he came to Paris without a major to his name, and while he badly wanted it, there was no real _pressure_ like French, Australian, world number two put on him. His actions are being analyzed more closely now, his earlier round matches something of note. 

He’s being watched, and he senses it.

“I knew what we were getting into when we started this, but--” Evgenia gives a shuddering sigh down the line. “I just want to ride down the street on her bike. With my arms around her.”

It’s not a big ask, and not a surprise.

That morning, Lauren filled the groupchat with pictures of her rainbow-decked motorcycle in preparation for the parade in a week. She’s ridden with Dykes on Bikes since she was legally old enough. It _does_ look fun. But Otabek knows that Evgenia really just wants to see her long-time girlfriend.

Thinking of the fizziness that builds in him when he knows he’ll see Yuri in a week, he understands.

It’s an easy enough decision. He has an hour before he has to get down to the courts, even. “Call you back.”

“Otabek,” Evgenia rages through her tears. “Hey--” Her upset is within reason; Otabek offered a call to comfort her after he realized how wistful she was, and now he’s leaving when he said he had half an hour to talk. But she’ll understand soon.

When he next checks the time, he has ten minutes before his taxi arrives. Otabek is _never_ late. He dashes around dressing, grabs his bag, out the door.

Yuri’s hair is in a tight bun, he’s wearing violet, and he means business. His handshake at the net feels finger-breaking. The crowd’s already at fever pitch.

“Davai,” Otabek says a hair before Yuri can. The text Yuri sent him before the match most assuredly does not count.

“Davai, _Beka,”_ Yuri snaps back like he’s supposed to be anything but endeared.

In the first set, Yuri is a whirlwind, and there’s nothing Otabek can do about it. Yuri soars across the court, slaps balls out of the air with a near-inhuman reach. His feet eat up the ground, and he chews up and spits out Otabek’s backhands. He wins 6-2.

Otabek picks compulsively at his racquet grip. What is he doing _wrong?_ A hundred things. He’s been hitting off-balance while Yuri always picks his poise back up before a shot. His shoddy service allows repeated breaks. This set has to be different.

In the next set, Otabek tries hard not to let Yuri gain ground. That’s his mistake. He’s not trying to rush the lines himself, he’s just down in the trenches, trying not to get shot. Yuri breaks him his first service game. Otabek can’t break back. Otabek is tailing at 3-4, and it’s Yuri’s serve.

Yuri attempts an ace, hits a fault. As a result, his second serve is easy pickings.

Otabek runs straight after it, makes contact--his racquet position seems all right, the ball seems like it should be inside the lines. It lands so clearly out that Otabek doesn’t even entertain challenging it. 

The second set also goes to Yuri.

He’s down two sets at a Grand Slam tournament. His prospects are not looking the best. While he might be able to win the next set, but he’ll have to take this match to the exhausting fifth set to win.

Nothing for it. After he inspects his knee at the break, he allows himself to turn his head just enough that Yuri isn’t merely in his periphery. He fears that when he’s on the back foot, looking at Yuri, who thus far at this tournament has played flawless tennis, will only demoralize him. Nonetheless, look he does. 

One of Yuri’s light brows rises with architectural grace, and sweat glistens off his cheekbones. _What are you going to do about it?_ his eyes ask.

Otabek knows what he’s going to do about it. 2-6, 4-6, that doesn’t reflect what he can do. How he can work the clay. How he can bend his will to it. It’s a repeat of last year, but it’s _embarrassing_ now, doesn’t feel like victory from the jaws of defeat, just feels like a slow start when he should be able to keep up by now. Rolling out his arms, rolling his head from side to side, Otabek prepares to serve.

He pushes. Pushes. Pushes. Pushes. Scrapes by with a skin-of-his-teeth 7-6, and he earns the right to play the fourth set.

The fourth set, this is where his long rallies become a double-edged sword. The end he cuts Yuri with is decidedly sharper. Otabek has greater muscle mass and greater endurance. Yuri can end points fast on winners, but the longer a point goes, the more unforced errors he makes. Otabek breaks Yuri for the first time in the match.

But he is still Yuri Plisetsky. In long bounds across the court, he comes up to the net and delivers a mouth-watering slice, hand off, racquet cutting the air and ball rotating improbably away. He breaks Otabek back.

5-5. Otabek needs this fifth set. Needs this win. He has to take risks. Bowing back for his serve, he gives it all he has, and the ball flies and bounces fast. It’s an unreturnable serve. An _ace._

Yuri’s mouth drops open, which maybe should be insulting but really is flattering, and Otabek has to gulp back guttural surprise himself. Cameras probably pick up a _gah_ all the same.

With Otabek up 6-5 and Yuri serving, Yuri dances up to the net on his toes, volleys, volleys, and Otabek shoots down every single one. At the end of that point, the crowds roar. 

Yuri’s tiring now, and when Otabek swipes him from corner to corner, he can’t quite return every ball. Otabek hits a backhand that wouldn’t quite be a winner at Yuri’s best. In his current state, he can’t return it. That was forty-thirty, and now that’s the game.

Two sets apiece. Anyone’s game going into the fifth set. Deja vu. That will _not_ be missed by fans.

Yuri’s head droops forward. Sweat droplets roll off his nape, and escaped hair sticks to his skin. That summer-pink. He looks tired, but there’s no tension in his lips. They’re soft, somehow, like even if he’s losing he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. When he was ten, could he have imagined this? Otabek couldn’t.

Otabek breaks Yuri’s first service game. Then he has to hang on for dear life. He remembers what Yuri said, about that demon that must have possessed Chulanont. But Yuri _is_ the demon. He’s hit his second wind, must have filled his lungs with a renewed dose of life. Because he’s faster now than Otabek remembers him even being in the first set. Darts and dives, blurry purple fish in a red clay sea. 

Otabek is up 5-4 and serving. He doesn’t really understand how. The heat sledgehammers him. And Otabek forges onward. His first serve at fifteen-thirty is so weak that it’s like a particularly battered second. Yuri leaps on it, returns, Otabek returns again, and Yuri’s answering shot splits the air past Otabek’s ear like a bullet. The umpire calls it out, and Yuri challenges. Breathless seconds, palpable prayer in the air. 

It’s in. 

Fifteen- _forty._ That messes Otabek up so much that he double-faults. Yuri has broken him back and retrieved Otabek’s stolen advantage. God. God, Yuri’s good. 5-5.

Now there are one of two options. Someone holds their service and breaks the other’s, or they both hold and they take it to a tiebreak.

Yuri’s serve. His serve goes long. His serve goes wide. Otabek returns his shaky second serves, and when Yuri tries to swing him up to the service line, Otabek pounds him back behind the baseline. It goes to thirty-forty. Screw his knee. Otabek jumps high for an overhead. Not the work of art that Yuri’s is, but it does the job, and he wins the game.

Yuri raps his racquet against his hip. Turns his face skyward, and the sun falls on him so he looks like a column of light himself. Of course.

As much as Otabek loves to play Yuri, he’s singularly infuriating. 

Serving on 6-5 puts pressure on Otabek’s serve. In the eleventh hour, he double faults twice. Everything feels surreal, the air like glue, sticking to him, weighing him down. His knee twinges. Then it’s the last headlong push of the game, as he’s serving on forty-thirty. And his forehand misfires, landing so soft Yuri tears it to shreds with a winner Otabek almost handed him on a silver platter.

Deuce.

Otabek can dance this dance. 

Ad Altin.

Deuce. 

Ad Plisetsky. 

Deuce. 

Ad Plisetsky. Skidding forward, Otabek scoops a ball out of the air and his shot makes it bounce right around Yuri’s feet. Yuri has to jerk awkwardly to return it, and the ball goes a whole lot of nowhere. 

Deuce. 

Yuri makes an unforced error. Ad Altin. Yuri hits a beautiful forehand. Deuce. 

Another unforced error, unexpectedly spotty gameplay for Yuri. Ad Altin.

Otabek plays one long point, and Yuri skitters back and forth for the ball, but as he’s making to run to the other side of the court, Otabek hits down the line. Yuri’s momentum carries him too far forward to turn back in time. Yuri gets centimeters from the ground, yet he doesn’t wipe out. He doesn’t reach the ball, either. It bounces back to the fence, and the ball-boy scrambles out of the way just in time.

Ad Altin. Wait. No. That’s the game, that’s the set, that’s the match. 

“Three for three,” Otabek mumbles to Yuri at the net, ready to collapse.

Yuri grunts, sounding more like Yakov than anything. Fumbling over Otabek’s shoulder, he grabs something on the back of his shirt. Yanks. The--tag? “Your shirt’s inside out.”

Before Otabek lifts his second Coupes des Mousquetaires, he makes sure to zip his jacket up.

They’re both in need of a shower, and Yuri wants a nap. They mutually agree over text during the press round to meet tomorrow morning whenever they wake up for a half-day together. Otabek’s a little disappointed. More than a little. 

Still, riding the wave of his win, a freshly-showered Otabek flops down onto his bed face-first and finally calls Evgenia back. “Did you get my email, Zhenya?”

“Beks, are you serious?” Evgenia shrieks so loud Otabek’s ears ring after he hangs up.

He scrolls in the excitement-clogged group-chat so he can see her, cheeks mascara-streaked, holding up a flight itinerary to see Lauren in one week.

 

Otabek’s quads are killing him. Panting, he half-sags over the bars of the stationary bike and clicks a picture of the odometer. _Goal for you tomorrow,_ he tells Yuri.

_fuuuk  
thought i had u today_

The count Yuri sends him then _is_ high, but Otabek is competitive. 

His knee’s improved significantly, and he’s tired of being restricted to swimming and other exercise gentle on his joints. His physical therapist and personal trainer have reluctantly okayed him to expand his off-court repertoire again, though they probably would not approve of his contests with Yuri. Another plus is that listening to his own mixes while he works out means that he can come back and refine them later. 

“Wait, wait, I wasn’t ready!” Yuri says when Otabek returns to his apartment and Skypes him. 

“Then why pick up?” Otabek indicates his headphones. “I’ll call tomorrow, then.” He’s DJing tonight.

Yuri speed-walks back over to his laptop. “Well, don’t be like _that.”_ He’s wearing the tiniest bicycle shorts, and his thighs ripple powerfully as he puts one foot up on his chair and unlaces his sneakers. Not as flashy as his court shoes. What’s more of interest is his shirt, something on the front that Otabek can’t see. 

Otabek points in question.

“Ah--” Yuri sighs and angles his shoulder. “It’s nothing.”

Leaning back, Otabek crosses his arms. He’s not letting Yuri get away with this one _that_ easily.

“Look, I liked _one_ fan theory on Twitter…” Yuri’s muscles flex as he stretches, one long elegant line. It’s distracting, but not enough to throw him off the scent. “Fine. No laughing.”

“I never laugh,” Otabek says, straight-faced. 

Standing, Yuri pulls his shirt straight so that Otabek can see it. Screen-printed on it is the face of a brown tabby cat and in big letters below, _TIGERCLAW WAS RIGHT._ “An Angel sent it to me.” He looks down at it, expression disdainful. “Whatever. It’s just workout clothes.”

Otabek clicks his tongue, disappointed. “You’re going to the Dark Forest for that.”

Yuri’s the one to laugh, flopping down in his chair. Resting his chin on crossed arms, he sighs, “It’s stupid, right?”

“It’s creative.” Otabek shrugs. “If you don’t like it…”

At that, Yuri’s eyes widen and he covers the cat face with both his hands. “Hey, get your own!” Leave aside that it’s _Otabek’s_ wardrobe that’s slowly dwindling from sticky fingers (he often leaves a tournament where he sees Yuri with a suitcase lighter than he packed).

 

“You look good together,” Michael shouts over the sound of gunfire from the video game they’re playing that Otabek is failing at so badly that Michael can beat him while simultaneously browsing the ATP World Tour website.

“ _Not_ the point of a head-to-head statistics comparison,” Otabek points out just before he gets a squelchy shot to the gut. 

“Those statistics look good, too.” Onscreen, Evgenia takes a swipe at Michael.

“Ooh, catfight!” Michael exclaims just before Evgenia mows him down. “Hey…”

Evgenia laughs and throws her controller down on her mattress. Sitting up, she stretches, partially out of the webcam frame. “You and Plisetsky are Scorpio and Pisces, Otabek. You know what that means?”

“No,” Otabek says, setting down his own controller and adjusting his laptop, “and don’t tell me.” He fights with the lower half of his face unsuccessfully against a yawn.

“You never even let me do your full natal chart,” Evgenia complains.

Michael screws up his fine-boned face. “Uh, his _what?_ ” 

“ _Star signs._ ” Evgenia looks scandalized at having to explain. “Of all sign combinations, Scorpio and Pisces have the most sexual chemistry. You know? Sparks!”

“Ooh,” Michael jeers. “Hey, Zhen, speaking of chemistry, have you seen all those rumors about you and Beks?”

“Rumors?” 

_”What?”_

Michael sends them links to articles where people have gone digging through Otabek’s friends’ Instagrams for pictures of them together, and some idiot has romantically linked Evgenia and Otabek. Several idiots. “I guess they didn’t go far back enough for anything with Andre?” 

On Otabek’s phone, there are still a few pictures of him and Andre with his smiling dark face and arm around Otabek. A reminder, but not a particularly painful one. It’s not unlikely that they’re somewhere on the internet as well.

“They missed all the pictures of me with K from this summer, too,” Evgenia says, exasperated. “I am...too gay for this.”

So is Otabek.

“Are you going to say something?” asks Michael.

Frowning, Otabek considers it. “No.” He looks to Evgenia for her perspective because unbelievably, it’s the two of them churning in the gossip mill.

“Anything he says will only feed the rumor-mongers.” Evgenia pushes her masses of hair over one shoulder and gives Otabek a long look. “And Otabek is not ready to be out.”

For that, Otabek has no response. Guilt squirms in his stomach again.

Michael jumps back in with, “What about you and Lauren, Zhen, what are your signs?”

Evgenia sits up straighter. Studies her nails. “Michael, you wouldn’t know a Virgo from a Leo anyway, so why ask?”

Disloyally, Otabek says, “Lauren is a Gemini.” 

Evgenia gasps in betrayal, and Michael snickers despite not knowing what any of it means because that’s who he is as a person.

[[chapter break?]]

Yuri runs up to the net for a volley, killer on grass, and Otabek dashes up to catch it on his racquet. The ball’s so short and Yuri’s _right there_ \--he returns a winner over Otabek’s shoulder.

Tilting his head to the side, Otabek gives him a wry look, watches his eyes sparkle.

Yuri plucked the first set 6-3. With significantly more pushing and shoving, Otabek took the second set 7-6. Yuri’s gunning for his third Wimbledon title, and Otabek wants his first.

When Otabek drags out a point, he’ll still usually win it. But Yuri will be all the fiercer the next point. More impatient. Sometimes he hits winners, but often his unforced errors occur on those points, when he’ll step in a bit too much or swing with too much force for his position in the court. 

When serving on 4-4, Otabek’s serve wobbles, and Yuri pounces and breaks him, going on to win the third set 6-4.

The fourth set tiebreak lasts forever. Finally, when Otabek’s busy trying to drag Yuri back and forth across the grass in his barely-Wimbledon-regulation black-on-white cheetah print tennis shoes for another agonizingly lengthy point, a fed-up Yuri pulls out his beautiful overhead, and that’s that.

Still, it was a grass court, a fast court, and Otabek gave Yuri a _fight._ His style has evolved to more versatility, certainly.

He watches Yuri’s white teeth go around the metal, and he almost smiles.

 

“Was that a smile, Otabek?” Viktor gives him a big, ridiculous grin, showing him the trophy ceremony shot Yuri retweeted. “But why the smile when you lost?”

Otabek almost almost-smiles again. He means well.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says without looking up from his dinner, and Viktor quails.

This Wimbledon has been a _good_ one for Russians, as evidenced by the Twitter feed Viktor keeps scrolling through in front of Otabek’s face. Mila in bubblegum pink lifted the ladies’ singles first place trophy, the Rosewater Dish, and a still-besotted Viktor and Yuuri, dogged by the kiss from last year and playing right through it, walked away with the men’s doubles runner-up trophy.

When Yuri tugs his arm, Otabek willingly resettles closer to his side again. “How was my serve?” he asks conspiratorially. 

Mila looks over at them and then looks away again, asking Yuuri something about Makkachin, eager to catch up with the now Japan-residing poodle. Mila’s impressive serve clocks speeds only men can typically reach.

“Eh.” Yuri steals a mushroom off of Otabek’s plate. “It could be paired with a better volley.”

Conscious of the cameras on them, Otabek looks straight ahead and murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Yuri stamps on his toes, hard.

“You know,” Viktor muses, swirling his wine in his glass, and Yuri jerks, caught-out, like subtlety is a foreign invention. Too in his head to notice, Viktor leans forward and says, “Now we have won the same number of singles’ Wimbledon titles.”

“Singles’?” Yuri smirks. “We have also won the same number of Wimbledon doubles’ titles.”

Offended, especially when he can see Mila nibbling back a laugh, Viktor says, “I was only going to say, you could easily outdo that number.”

“I know.” Nevertheless, there’s something about the way Yuri pushes his food around his plate for a moment, looking down at it, and perhaps a hint of pink in his cheeks, that says it means more to him than he’s letting on right now.

“I met him when he was a kid, just thirteen, _so_ cute, you can’t imagine,” Viktor enthuses to Otabek, who probably can’t imagine. “Yakov says to Yura, he asks him, ‘Would you like to be like Viktor Nikiforov one day?’ and Yura says, ‘I’m going to be better than him.’” His eyes shine as he speaks, and reaching across the table, Viktor squeezes Yuri’s shoulder.

“Your shirt is getting in my soup, old man,” Yuri seethes.

Helpfully, Otabek passes over his own unsullied bowl, and Mila scoots Yuri’s bowl over to herself.

Looking helplessly between the three, Yuri protests, “That’s fucking not what I--”

“Just accept our love,” Mila coos, and Otabek places a hand on his knee under the table where no one can see.

Yuri goes quiet and red-faced.

 

“And then I told Baba,” Yuri says, leaning a shoulder against the lockers and gesturing in the corner of Otabek’s eyes, “I don’t care what you say, she’s one to watch out for with how she can up the difficulty of her routines to win.” Otabek dutifully watches the figure-skating clips Yuri sends him, but he only follows the sport as much as Yuri texts him updates. “I still think she was underscored at the Olympics.”

After Otabek’s semifinal in Cincinnati against Giacometti, which went swimmingly, 6-2, 6-2, he’s in the locker room, picking apart the double knots on his laces. In here, it’s loud, the walls not quite isolating them from the roar of the crowd.

“Her triple-triple combo is sick as hell. And her catch-foot layback--” Yuri pokes Otabek’s left knee with his toe. “Are you even listening?” 

Surprised, Otabek looks up at him after he shoves his feet in his shoes. “I’m always listening, Yura.” 

That brings Yuri up short. He narrows his eyes.

Otabek shrugs. “Sometimes I just like to hear you talk.” 

Yuri’s mouth does something complicated. “Come back to my room, and we’ll rewatch her SP again.” Grabbing Otabek’s bag, Yuri slings it over his free shoulder. Then he takes Otabek by the wrist, fingers delicate in their command. Only when they emerge into the sun does he let go.

 

Otabek bounces the ball twice, comes up to serve. A shout of _Altin!_ startles him, and he bounces the ball twice more, turning his head.

After a strict word from the umpire, the crowds quiet.

Otabek lands his first serve. He’s at forty-fifteen, and while he hasn’t broken yet, he’s confident this time, confident with the level of his game. 

Down the line, JJ fires off a backhand, and Otabek meets it with a big forehand. JJ whips it back across. Otabek hits the ball almost right between his legs back at the baseline, and it’s in, unreturnable.

What a difference this is from the semifinals of the last US Open. JJ’s game has improved. Arguably, he’s playing better than when he won the 2016 US Open. 

Still, JJ begins to doubt himself. It shows in his stroke-making. There’s not so much power, and everything is too straightforward for Otabek. Every time, he can reach the ball and return it faster with his own angle on it, controlling the progress of the points. 

His serve is starting to deteriorate as well. He might have a worst first-serve percentage than Otabek at this stage, which Otabek thinks is something of an _achievement._

Otabek wants JJ at his best. He wants to play his best friend like he did when they were children, when winning every point off of JJ was something sweet.

It’s not to say that JJ is bad. Indeed, even in his uncertainty, clear insecurity at this point in the match, he’s playing better than anyone Otabek has faced in previous tournaments.

JJ serves the last game of the match. At thirty-all, Otabek runs expectantly after the ball, then returns it, hand flying off the racquet grip almost faster than he can think. JJ returns something unconvincing, and Otabek trounces him. 

Down thirty-forty, JJ takes a long time with his first serve. Long. He serves again, and once more, the ball skids off into the painted court. A double fault.

Painful, humiliating, and this semifinal win isn’t the one Otabek really wanted. The man looks completely defeated. Otabek clasps his shoulder at the net, JJ’s smile a weak shadow.

Tomorrow is Otabek’s grace day before the final with Yuri, so he can technically stay up somewhat, though what he most likes to do is spend the day doing light exercise and eating well, not nursing a hangover.

JJ’s outstripping him, though. He signals to the bartender for another. “King JJ is dethroned,” he says mournfully to Otabek.

“The semifinals of a _major,_ ” Otabek reminds him.

“A major failure!” JJ says. “Ah.” He sinks his head into his hands. 

Otabek stares at JJ’s profile, not sure what to say. 

“It’s you and Princess Plisetsky’s game now. You’re third-wheeling the whole tennis world,” JJ declares, slumping back in his chair.

Otabek frowns, especially at _Princess._

“It was a good run.” JJ clasps a hand over his heart with a drunken sigh. “It was a good run, Leroy.”

“You’re competition,” Otabek tells him.

JJ chuckles.

Otabek shakes his head and says honestly,“Can't believe that I beat you.”

“What?” It’s a distraction for JJ, Otabek’s suggestion that he didn’t deserve to win. “O! You played so well!”

Otabek raises his eyebrows, thumps JJ’s back. “So did you.”

Coughing a little, JJ nonetheless concedes the point. “You think Bella will want to marry a guy who hasn’t won a major title since 2016?” he asks the bottom of his drink.

After he looks up, Otabek looks at him seriously in the face. “JJ, Isabella _still_ doesn’t know anything about tennis.”

JJ accidentally snorts his drink up his nose, then laughs with the air of tired hysterics. Otabek goes to get him another drink on his tab and makes sure to tell the bartender to water it down, sure JJ is too far gone to notice.

When JJ’s slumped over the bar top, bleary, Otabek goes to pick up the tab.

Just in the time, JJ rouses himself and says loudly, “I’m paying.”

There’s only so much arguing that can be done with a drunk JJ. Disgruntled, Otabek ends up splitting the check with him and then calling it a night.

Otabek leads JJ back up to his hotel room, cleans up his face, and leaves him lying on the bed looking at wedding invitation templates on his phone.

 

Looking up at Yuri, who lifts the edge of his shirt to wipe his face and stains the blue dark, he thinks, _This is our game._

Five sets in the blistering August heat at the US Open. Five epic-scale sets, where Yuri pulled out all the tricks, and Otabek stood like a wall in front of them.

 

Yuri would take Otabek to the farthest corner of the court with a backhand, then Otabek would sweep his arm and send him behind the baseline. Yuri would serve two aces in a game, Otabek would chip away at him with heavy-spinning balls until deuce. 

When Otabek began attacking fiercely with his forehand, Yuri combatted it, turning the spin and power back on him until Otabek reeled and couldn’t reach the ball. Otabek would break, be on the verge of the set turning in his favor, and Yuri would put up his fists and break back. 

The match couldn’t be called until the last moment. No one knew where the win would fall.

While his sense of achievement is keen, Otabek feels no incredulity as he raises the US Open cup in shaking arms. 

 

“See, this, this is what I hate.” Yuri’s thumbs move across his keyboard, and Otabek stops him with a hand on his wrist. 

“I’ve got it.” Otabek fishes out the picture and opens Instagram for the first time in months to post the clarification: a picture of his multicolored, swirled, whipped-cream-topped drink with his hand wrapped around it. He’s grateful now that Yuri compelled him to take the picture.

“Two drinks on the table! Why do they think the frou-frou one is mine? Don’t answer that, Beka.” Yuri sips his very sensible second black coffee. 

“I wouldn’t knock the frou-frou drinks,” Doug says, coming out of the bathroom. He joined them halfway through breakfast, grudgingly ordering a donut.

Yuri’s eyes flick over him, and he scoots his chair back from Otabek’s to make room between them. Reaches for a chair from the table behind theirs.

Waving him off, Doug pulls a chair from another table and sits across from them. “Lord almighty, a US Open, Otabek. That’s my _boy.”_

“I’m Kazakh, Coach.”.

“Hey.” Doug spreads his hands. “That’s the American dream.”

Yuri stares at Doug from behind his coffee.

“Like you won’t get it next year,” Doug tells him cheerfully. 

“Thanks,” Otabek and Yuri say simultaneously.

“Yuri,” Yuri says, holding out a hand. “We--haven’t met officially.” They’ve probably exchanged words in passing, Otabek thinks, but Yuri hasn’t spent a week with Doug like Otabek has with Yakov. 

Otabek is of the impression that meeting someone’s coach, like meeting anyone else in someone’s family, reveals many things about them. Though all these years later and he _still_ doesn’t know what his association with Doug says about him.

“Pleased to meet you.” Doug grasps his hand firmly. “Otabek and I have been following your career since…Since when, do you think, Otabek?”

“A while,” Otabek says, remembering the boy with the kitten vibration dampener and the arm like a swan’s neck.

“You should come visit,” Doug says. “It’s good to see you boys getting along. A friendly rivalry is the best kind.” Otabek doesn’t really talk about Yuri to Doug at all, so it’s a rather underwhelming overstatement.

“I could teach him a thing or two, like not to look like a deer in the headlights in front of the net,” Yuri says lightly.

Doug guffaws. 

“I’ve hit a volley before,” Otabek protests, and Doug guffaws harder.

Yuri’s eyes crinkle at him over the rim of his coffee mug. He’s going to pay for this win in New York City later in the 2019 season, he knows, but he’ll enjoy it for now.

 

 _DEAR ABBY,_ Otabek imagines writing. _My on-court archnemesis and I have faced a minor road-bump in our relationship, and it looks a lot like systematic homophobia._

Their careers have heated up to the degree--become linked to the degree--that people are pressing deeper into their personal lives. Handsome, volatile Yuri had a fanbase when he was still a Junior, while Otabek’s just beginning to develop one off the tennis forums. Currently, Yuri updates him, they are feuding on whether to call themselves the _Otacubs_ after the pictures of Ted swinging from his bag or the _Otababes_ after God knows what.

So their friendship is a hot topic, too. While Otabek and Yuri circumvent cameras, they can’t avoid them all the time. They’ve graduated from a #4 spot in a listicle to listicles of their own. His mother likes to send him her favorites. This thing he has with Yuri, it might be in front of thousands, but it feels like the most private thing in the world. Being put under the microscope is _miserable._

On the other side, Viktor and Yuuri are a minor celebrity gay couple with a mashup name. Once they moved to Japan, they began to take Out interviews, put out casual chatty videos for fans.

They have hired someone to go through their mail after Yuuri sliced open his hand on a razor tucked under an envelope flap.

Yuri calls him one day, and says, “I’m being offered like, three of Vitya’s old sponsorships. Because he’s gay. Of course, he’s being offered new ones, also because he’s gay. But it’s not enough to make up the difference.”

“You’re taking them?” Otabek doesn’t mean it to sound like an accusation, but what else could it be?

“Don’t you fucking talk to me about making a stand,” Yuri says vehemently.

Otabek swallows.

“You’re hiding as much as I am, you piece of shit.” Yuri’s voice breaks.

They know now. The blood between them, the deep cut. The shared wound.

In _GQ,_ Yuri arches over the back of a chair in a sharp suit, arms stretched in the air. In scrolling text at the bottom of the photo, _The_ enfant terrible _of men’s tennis._ His bared neck shows his Adam’s apple, and blond hair trails over his face.

The black-and-white obscures his green eyes.

He’s so far away.

On the other side of the net at the World Tour Finals, it still doesn’t seem like there’s less than half a continent between them.

They play, and the fire to win is there. They are too professional to let it sputter out for this. But there are no sparks.

Yuri comes up to the net and shakes his hand, and Otabek squeezes tight enough that the lines of his bone draw themselves on his palm.

He doesn’t see his teeth on the trophy until he checks the news in his hotel room that night. Alone. He’s felt alone for a long time.

He has Lauren, Evgenia, Michael, dozens of other acquaintances should he want to pick up a conversation with them. He has JJ, always there, who can always pick him up a little. His mother. Doug.

But it’s been a long time since Andre. A long time. This, he deludes himself, is the reason.

Well-aware that he’s not unattractive, Otabek knows dating another man is not out of the realm of possibility. With only one of them being high-profile, it could be--easier.

Otabek thinks then of JJ. Of how he holds back, he waits for his wedding night. How JJ thinks of it: why should he have to chase anything else when what he wants is right there?

A knock at his door makes him tense. Springing up, he goes to it.

“About the sponsorships,” Yuri says like he’s drawing a sword.

Otabek pulls him inside. “I don’t care.”

World Tour Finals champion Yuri Plisetsky watches kitten videos while lying beside him on his hotel bed close enough to touch, not quite touching.

Face-down in his pillow, Otabek breathes slowly.

"I know you don’t care.” Yuri’s voice is purposely detached. “Some of the money from Vitya’s old sponsorships, I’m sending back to my grandfather. But the rest, I’m putting in this fund for Vitya. And Yuuri.”

“Fund?” Otabek lifts his head slightly, gets the air knocked out of him in more ways than one when Yuri climbs on top of his back.

He’s heavier than he looks. For as much as Otabek wants him there, though, it makes him light.

“For them to have a big, stupid wedding,” Yuri mumbles into his back, “whenever they want to. Or--or can. It doesn’t matter. It’s why I'm still taking those bullshit paychecks. I know you don’t care,” he repeats.

If Otabek cares any more, his rib-cage will crack down the center. “Come with me to Almaty.”

Yuri shifts. Stubbled cheek against the soft hair at Otabek’s nape. Pressing him down, body over body, everything Otabek could want anchoring him down to this hotel bed. His chin digs into him as he nods.


	9. Chapter 9

With the itinerant Lilia Baranovskaya staying at Yuri’s apartment, Otabek’s on the fold-out couch for the week of the Saint Petersburg Open. 

Yuri ends up pulling the title out from under his feet, which he saw coming a year away, and the cheers in the stadium deafened. The Wildcat of Russia, they call him now, and Otabek certainly felt like prey being stalked after wandering too far into a predator’s territory. He’s glad he played another year.

“You lost, so now you have to pay up,” Yuri says, smiling with his canines showing.

Otabek, who was going to go with this whether he won or lost, patiently holds out his hands for him, though with how crowded against each other they are on the living room floor, it’s not far to reach at all.

Yuri bends over his hands, and Otabek reaches up to tuck the hair behind his ear. It stills him for a moment, but he continues applying the clear coat of polish to Otabek’s nails. “Now you have to close your eyes.”

“A surprise?” Otabek settles against the back of the couch, watching the top of Yuri’s head. Obediently, he tips his head back and closes his eyes. The brush-strokes are a faint sensation, and Yuri’s fingertips are cool. 

“Open.” Yuri lifts his head, so close the tip of his perfect nose brushes Otabek’s cheek.

“Told you I could pull them off.” Otabek tips his head against Yuri’s and looks down at his nails, painted a black that doesn’t reflect light but for the shiny white zebra stripes on his little fingers.   
Yuri huffs. “I was trying to show you that like I was _saying,_ zebras are black striped with white.” Pinching his little finger, he shakes it gently.

Laughter floats up out of Otabek’s chest. “All this for that?” Otabek is in too deep, has been in too deep.

Then he ruins the conclusion of both arguments by reaching for his drink before his zebra-striped little fingers are completely dry. 

Yuri yells at him but redoes them with the same patience, and Otabek gets to watch the little knot between his brows this time.

 

“Not worth it.” 

Yuri elbows Otabek away. “Put your arms straight already, Beka.”

Sighing, Otabek lays his arms out side-by-side beside Yuri’s. Apparently some people have popped up making fun of how disproportionately large Otabek’s left arm is in comparison to his right arm, and Yuri wants to make the point that it happens to _all_ tennis players. 

Otabek still doesn’t understand the point of internet fights, but he does like the chance to shamelessly ogle the muscle of Yuri’s forearms. “Wait,” he says when Yuri’s about to post the picture. Just visible are Yuri’s painted nails. Men’s tennis is not the most masculine sport in the world, and somehow, that turns the screws tighter. Delineates narrow boundaries of acceptable behavior where stepping outside results in skewering. Reaching over, Otabek closes his hand over Yuri’s, folding his fingers.

Yuri doesn’t look at him, but he takes a second picture. “That’ll show them.”

Unfolding Yuri’s fingers, he rubs his thumb across his nail and gazes at him until Yuri ducks his head, looks away again, but his shoulders have relaxed. 

“What is this?” Lilia reenters the flat and squints down at Yuri’s phone. “A size comparison contest?” Her mouth pinches, sour.

“It’s not like that!” Yuri says hastily. He slaps his forehead and whines, “Lilia.”

Lilia, Puma Tiger Scorpion the first rubbing against her ankles, shakes her head. “Men.”

Tennis relies more on technique than on brute strength, and among jocks, they are not jocks. That doesn’t save men from posturing.

It does not save _women_ from posturing. After Yuri posts the picture of their lopsided arms, Mila makes an Instagram post flexing her biceps, which is immediately swarmed. Including, Otabek notes with amusement, Lauren.

“Are you all prepared for your trip?” Lilia asks Yuri as she hands him wipes for the countertop.

Yuri, lunging over the countertop, lies through his teeth, “Yes, Lilia, I’m ready.”

“Hm.” Otabek has never heard a more caustic single syllable. “Make sure you pack at some point.”

Otabek pauses in sweeping the floor to give Yuri a look, amused at how Lilia was not convinced for a second. 

Yuri mouths _shut up_ back at him.

“I have,” Lilia says, reaching over into her purse, “two tickets to the ballet.” Her eyes move between them.

Yuri inhales. “Lilia, you don’t have to--”

Lilia’s eyes narrow. “I insist.”

In bits and pieces, Otabek is beginning to see how someone like Yuri could have come to be.

 

Lilia leads them to the box, and there are a few glances and murmurs at her. She is known here. Baranovskaya had divergent talents as a child: tennis and ballet. 

She chose the former, and she picked up a bronze at the Olympics among more than a smattering of other titles. Many women and men cite her elegant stroke-making as a reason they were so drawn to the sport. Even now that the game has so changed, Otabek sees value in watching old videos of her matches, and not only because he sees her in Yuri.

She chose the former. Reading about her again on the second night of his stay, Otabek saw that she was _also_ considered a remarkable dancer. Gorgeous and graceful with a dazzling future before her. But with the demands of ballet on her time and her body, she could choose only one. 

Otabek watches her profile as the dancers whirl and jump across the stage, and he wonders if she regrets her choice.

At intermission, when Yuri slinks off to the restroom and she breaks to smoke, he asks her. “Would you choose otherwise if you could?”

“Would I choose to dance instead?” Lilia blows out smoke. “I would, for the chance to live that life in complete as well.” He remembers her in her long white skirt at the Wimbledon, the perfect finish of her forehand over her shoulder, the way her eyes closed. “But I do not believe in regret.”

Otabek leans back against the wall, looking thoughtfully down at his shoe.

“I’ve watched you on a clay court. You make life too hard for yourself.” Lilia stubs out her cigarette and shakes her head, clamming up after that.

Back in the box, Yuri shimmers like the dancers, green eyes flickering. Otabek watches the ballet unfold in awe. It’s never something he would have come to see by himself, but it’s beautiful. Yuri and Lilia critique it all the way back to the apartment, while Otabek just leans his cheek against the window and daydreams, content. Right now, life doesn’t seem so difficult.

 

Nikolai Plisetsky ruffles his grandson’s hair and fixes Otabek with baleful eyes.

Otabek very determinedly does not shift from foot to foot, extending a polite hand and trying to match the surprising firmness of his handshake. He’s exhausted after the train ride to Moscow, but he desperately wants to make a good impression. “Thank you for inviting me.”

Nikolai dips his head in acknowledgment. “Yurochka, I want you to practice on the courts at least tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay, Dedushka,” Yuri agrees dutifully. “You’ll come watch us play?” There’s a childlike hopefulness in his eyes that Otabek has never seen.

“I will. And if you win, I’ll make pirozkhi for you tonight,” Nikolai tells him.

Yuri clasps his hands together, then pauses. “And if _Otabek_ wins?”

His eyes gleam. “You’ll make the pirozhki.”

 

“You don’t have to be so gentle with it!” Leaning over Otabek, Yuri aggressively rolls out the dough.

Otabek cuts his eyes to the side, a touch of the suggestive at the corner of his mouth.

Yuri wipes flour across his face. “Fuck off, Altin.”

“Yura,” Nikolai rumbles. “Be polite to your guest.”

“Sorry, Dedushka.” He turns to Otabek and very quietly hisses, “Piss off.”

Otabek ultimately moves out of the way and lets Yuri work the dough himself. Yuri does let him cut the circles out of the dough. As they work, Yuri keeps stealing glances at his grandfather watching something grainy and old on his tiny television.

Taking mercy on him, Nikolai lumbers over, a hand rubbing his back. He tastes the mixture of the filling and adds more pepper, then nods to himself.

Otabek’s phone vibrates insistently while he watches grandfather and grandson fill the pirozhki and pinch together the dough. Glancing at the screen, he tells Yuri with an air of apology, “It’s JJ.” He wouldn’t pick up, but it’s probably about the bridesmaid dresses, which have JJ running around like a headless chicken.

Yuri makes a disparaging sound and gestures for him to get on with it.

“Apparently a sweetheart neckline is not universally flattering,” JJ despairs. “What does that even _mean?”_

“I can ask Yura,” Otabek offers without thinking. JJ doesn’t know he came to stay with him last year during the St. Petersburg Open, doesn’t know he’s here this year, doesn’t know he’s meeting Yuri’s grandfather right now.

“You want to just call up Yuri Plisetsky and ask him about sweetheart necklines?” JJ sounds grudgingly impressed. “These fittings will be a nightmare. At least our tuxes will be easy!”

Otabek hums in agreement. “Excited?”

“It’s too close, and it’s too far away at the same time. All the way in May, but I have to wait til May. You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Otabek says fondly.

When he hangs up with JJ five minutes later, he can hear low voices from the kitchen.

“He’s not like he seems,” Yuri’s telling his grandfather. “He’s really--he quotes Walt Whitman. You’ll like him.”

Otabek sidles around the edge of the door, feeling bad for eavesdropping and wanting to rejoin, but he hears Nikolai snort and say, “You think he’s a bad boy? Pah. You should have seen me at his age.”

 

On the flight to Almaty, they sit touching arm-along-arm, and for a blissful hour, Yuri sleeps with his head on Otabek’s shoulder. When he wakes, Yuri throws the blanket over their laps and under its scratchy heat, hooks their little fingers around each other.

 

“Will you two fine young men pick up some groceries on the way back?” Otabek’s mother looks at them, her glasses slipping down her nose.

He’s taking Yuri on a sunset ride around the city while they still have a little energy left. He doesn’t want to drag him to the corner store. “List?” He has no idea what _some_ groceries mean. His mother is terribly disorganized, the very stereotype of the absent-minded professor. 

His mother, inputting data into a software program, does not respond.

They’ll just guess, then. Otabek grabs a cloth bag and then hands Yuri the helmet he had a friend pick up for him--he’ll have to remember to pay her back tomorrow. 

“Sweet.” Yuri jams it on his head and leads the way outside.

Otabek gestures Yuri to get on first.

“Really? Afte Melbourne?” Yuri’s eyes drop to Otabek’s right knee, peeking out of a rip in his jeans.

Reaching up--Yuri’s outgrown coltishness and now is just as tall as he is strong--Otabek adjusts the helmet on his head, touching the soft skin of his chin (still needs a shave), and then steps back demonstratively.

Yuri shrugs and swings a thigh over the bike. Twisting, he looks back at Otabek.

Once he climbs on behind him, Otabek reaches forward and adjusts Yuri’s hands on the handles, wrapping them securely. “Gloves?” His neck prickles. In the window, a brush of movement--his mother, watching them with her hand at her curved lips.

“I have longer fingers than you.” To prove his point, Yuri tugs Otabek’s wrist and lines their fingers up in five shivering lines of sensation.

Otabek slips his fingers sidelong and for a brief moment, clasps their fingers together. Then he guides Yuri’s hand back to the handle. “Told you,” he murmurs in Yuri’s ear when they’re cruising down the quiet streets of the neighborhood, making ruckus. The scent of his honey shampoo drifts into his nose over someone’s cooking smoke.

Yuri shivers and turns them smoothly out into the road, Otabek leaning easy with him. 

Now they pick up speed, the wind rattling the zippers on their jackets and blowing their shirts coolly back against their bodies. Before them, the sun drops, blood orange hanging low on the horizon. Meditation can’t calm Otabek half as much.

“Left here,” Otabek says. When they park in front of the store, Yuri gets down on shaky legs with rare awkwardness. Otabek catches him against his shoulder. Smiles.

“What are you so happy about, asshole?” Yuri spits, but his glowing eyes light on Otabek’s mouth.

And they are in Almaty, and they can’t do this right now. Otabek exhales, and he lets Yuri go ahead.

Unpeeling his jacket, Yuri ties it around his slim hips and wanders down the aisles.

Otabek follows equally sedately, though less aimlessly, trying to pick up things his mother might conceivably need. He picks up eggs, kumis. Pauses at the sanitary pads and grabs some of those. 

It’s incredibly domestic, and Otabek thinks, fatally, that he could get used to doing this. Buying the kind of milk Yuri likes, planning meals for them to cook together, maybe tossing a pack of condoms in underneath the potatoes.

Yuri turns the corner into the spice aisle and sneezes like a kitten. He whirls around, indignant, when Otabek snorts. “Maybe I’m deathly allergic, and my airpipe is closing up, and I’ll need to be _intubated,_ and you’ll have to live with having laughed at me in my last moments-- _what?”_ he snaps when Otabek just stands there.

Elbows on the shopping cart, Otabek shrugs. “I’m waiting.”

Glaring at him, Yuri flounces off somewhere. When they meet at the counter, he has a bar of Kazakh dark chocolate in his hand.

Otabek takes it from him and places it along with the rest of their items. The man at the cash register burns holes into him with his stare, and Otabek feels his eyes on his back all the way out. Yuri twitches at his side, but Otabek stills him with a look. It’s not until they’re trying to balance the bag and themselves on the bike, Otabek in control this time, that Yuri demands, “What was that guy’s problem? Is it because--”

Is it because of them, Yuri wants to ask, Otabek realizes immediately, of how they look together. Not a conclusion without reason, but this time it’s something more innocuous. “My friends used to shoplift from here.”

“Shoplift! What, did _you?”_

“No.”

“Well, _that’s_ good.” Yuri seems to consider it. “Were they poor?”

“No.”

“What the hell kind of friends do you have?” Yuri asks, exasperated.

“You’ll meet some of them,” Otabek tells him, “including Evgenia.” Otabek was on the phone with Evgenia about a computer issue once when Yuri Skyped him, and he and Evgenia surprisingly got along well.

“Can’t wait,” Yuri says with more sarcasm than Otabek thinks is warranted.

At home, his mother hasn’t moved an inch. He and Yuri unpack everything, and Otabek holds out the pads to his mother.

“In a few years, I won’t need these,” she declares, rattling them back and forth. “The only good thing this damn organ ever gave me was you.”

Otabek frowns at her, playful. 

Soon after he was born, his mother left the father he never knew without hesitation and raised Otabek on her own, receiving little assistance from extended family because of stigma. Through the rigors of academia, the stresses of depleted money and single motherhood, she still gave him a good life.

“I didn’t have a chance to make up the spare room,” his mother tells them over dinner. “Mm. You’ve improved, Otabek. Or was that Yuri?”

“Was Yura,” Otabek admits without shame. “Spare room…?” he prompts because if he doesn’t, she’ll forget she ever said anything. He can get some sheets and dust it down quickly.

“Hm? Oh.” Sagely, his mother says, “You’ll have to share Otabek’s room, I’m afraid. I know it will be a hardship, but I’m confident you’ll endure.”

Yuri gives him a look of disbelief, and Otabek gives him a helpless look right back. That’s his mother.

 

“Look at this itty bitty racquet.” Yuri lifts it to his face with a grin. “Still just the right size for you.”

There are several boxes here with more embarrassing contents than child-sized tennis racquets, especially as his nostalgic mother insisted he ship his old things over before he moved to his new apartment, and Otabek does not doubt that Yuri will find them in short order. 

He’s already eviscerated him over the photo albums, one of his favorites a picture of Otabek in his mother’s glasses. Otabek will have to play interference so Yuri can’t ask his mother for a copy.

“What is _this?”_ Unrolling a poster, Yuri gapes at it.

Otabek doesn’t believe in embarrassment, he tells himself. He was a kid, and he can own it. His ears still go hot at the glossy blow-up of the 2000s band D4NG3R, edgy and eyelinered. A young Otabek was enamored with their androgyny.

“You’ve lost like, twenty cool points,” Yuri tells him. Rolling it up, he raps him on the nose. 

“Cool points?” Otabek asks, hopeful.

Yuri snorts. “You can forget about them now.” After a moment, he carefully unrolls it again. For all his mockery, he’s careful with the faded white-worn poster. “Pose with it?”

Otabek scowls. “No Instagram.”

“No Instagram,” Yuri promises, rocking to one leg with his phone ready and extending his free hand to Otabek. “Only for me. And you’ll need--these.”

A suggestible participant in his own humiliation, Otabek accepts the pair of shades, slips them onto his nose, and throws up peace signs for the camera.

 

“Shoplifters.” Otabek spreads his hands, gesturing to the jumble of his childhood friends from Almaty, all grown up now and already buzzed, at the very least. “Here they are.”

Hands jammed in his pockets, Yuri nods to them where they laze around on the couch and the floor of Kadyr’s cockroachy flat. Sitting on the counter in terrifying heels (more terrifying that she’ll wear them day and night down backroads in backwards rural Kazakhstan), Zulfiya raises one pierced eyebrow. “That’s a cute white chocolate morsel you have there, Beks.” 

Before Otabek can say anything, Yuri retorts, “He wishes he had me.”

Zulfiya smirks. “I bet he does.” Leaping off the counter, she crooks her finger and gestures Yuri to come with her to the kitchen.

Otabek doesn’t have a good feeling about this, but he’s smart enough to stay out of it. He joins Kadyr instead, who’s showing Sulundik something on his laptop and repeatedly offers Otabek a blunt--not because he’s pushy, but he keeps forgetting that Otabek declines.

The house party is a raucous affair, people plodding in and out of the place, some on steadier feet than others. Every now and then someone will come to catch up with Otabek. Enlik drunkenly congratulates him on winning the “English Open.”

“Yura?” Otabek keeps losing sight of him. He pokes his head out onto the balcony, then instantly covers his eyes.

“Don’t be a prude.” He hears the rustle of cloth that must be Zulfiya pulling her top back up. “I sweep them at poker a few more times, I’ll be able to afford top surgery.” While she adjusts her breasts, Otabek stares determinedly at a blinking satellite passing overhead.

“If you ever start a fund or anything, let me know,” Yuri tells her. “Also, you should give me poker tips.”

“Don’t,” Otabek says, but Zulfiya’s already tottering back inside, waving at them over her shoulder.

Yuri stands with his shoulder to Otabek’s, looking after her. “These are your friends?”

“Some of them,” Otabek says honestly. He can’t say he’s kept track of all the faces he’s seen tonight, and many of these people, he hasn’t really known since he was ten. 

But friends or not, these are Otabek’s _people._ He gets into so much trouble with them every time they catch up, and they’re part of coming home.

To see Yuri mesh with them makes a tipsy Otabek over-sentimental. His mother has thoroughly changed her mind on _the Plisetsky boy,_ too, and each night they sleep and wake beside each other, gives him more and more significant looks. And Yuri knows. And Otabek knows. Every day, the silvery threads wind around them tighter. 

Otabek and Yuri live thousands of miles and a dozen hours away from each other. They are each other’s biggest competition on court, the tallest roadblock in each other’s careers. Difficult enough already for Yuri to hide who he is when who he is is so brilliant and beautiful. Hard enough already to conceal the nature of their bond in front of an audience. Athletes on a global stage, Yuri from Russia who would persecute him, Otabek from Kazakhstan who would abandon him and in America who would shun him--having anything more than they already do isn’t an _option._

His liquor-soaked brain still thinks maybe, maybe.

“You can have back five cool points for Zulfiya. Two for Ultarak.” Yuri holds out both hands and tries to count.

Otabek squints over the railing. “Thirteen. No. Seven.” He shakes his head, blurry with alcohol. At least they’re a walking distance from his mother’s.

“You know, you have a whole separate life.” Yuri sounds wistful. When Otabek looks at him, he says, “I mean, my entire life--my _entire_ life has been tennis, it feels like...sometimes, anyway. I didn’t get to be a stupid kid.”

Otabek thinks of telling him that having to live a second life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. His heart scratches at his ribs, and he thinks against it. 

Leaning back against the railing, Yuri hooks one arm loosely through Otabek’s, tipping his head back onto his shoulder. “I like them,” he says, which really tells Otabek how wasted he is. “Your Lost Boys.”

The moniker makes lips quirk. “Don’t let Zulfiya hear that.”

Yuri yawns. “She can be Tiger Lily.”

 

“I can do that.” Yuri watches Otabek traverse the length of the tall garden wall, arms out on either side of him for balance.

Squatting on the edge of the wall, Otabek beckons him to join him. 

Yuri scales up the side of the tree and clambers up onto the wall, walking on light feet towards Otabek. Maybe more like Lilia than ever. Or more like a cat. “Do you think he’ll let me pet him?” He points to the scraggly orange stray perched on the edge of the wall.

“Cheating on PTS?” Otabek eyes the cat; the cat eyes him back. There have always been a variety of them squirreling around his neighborhood. “You can try.”

As Yuri tiptoes down to the end, the cat does not move. It’s only when Yuri picks his tentative way all the way up to the cat that he streaks off into the herb bushes on the other side. “You’ll never get fat that way,” Yuri chastises the long-gone cat.

“Firepaw was never meant to be a kittypet,” Otabek says seriously.

Yuri laughs. Laughs too hard, arms pinwheeling.

Otabek reaches for him in alarm, and in his sudden forward motion, _he’s_ the one who pitches off-balance. 

Tugging him back upright, Yuri pats his chest, condescending. “Don’t try to be a knight, Beka.”

Sheepish, Otabek looks skyward, and Yuri inches towards him closer. Just as he’s tempted to drop an arm around his waist or something stupider, there’s the sound of shouting.

Not his much friendlier neighbor, who is Lauren’s age, but her great-aunt, shaking her fist at them and shouting obscenities in Kazakh.

“What’s she saying?” Yuri backs off.

Stating the obvious, Otabek says, “Nothing good.” Then he ducks as she plucks apples from her tree and pelts them.

Yuri yelps and Otabek nudges him forward in a hurry.

Pushing and pulling, they jump over the side of the wall and scramble down the lemon tree, landing hard at the base.

A winded Yuri comments, “I heard apples are native to Kazakhstan.”

Otabek doesn’t bite back his laugh. Reaching into Yuri’s hair, he pulls out a piece of smashed, squishy fruit. “Invasive to your hair.”

While Yuri’s washing out his hair in the sink, grumbling about it, his mother knocks at the bedroom door.

Otabek goes to let her in, raising his eyebrows in question.

“Gulnaz says you were being a nuisance,” she says, raising her eyebrows back at him.

“Gulnaz says...many things,” Otabek says in his defense. “Shouts them.”

“Mm. Most of them unprintable.” She steps into the room and watches Yuri scrub at the sticky juice residue in his hair. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Yuri claims. “Blame Sir Otabek of Altin here.”

Otabek will get him back later for throwing him under the bus. 

“Is that so.” His mother runs her fingers through Otabek’s hair, tugging with a critical eye, hard enough to hurt. “It’s getting long. You need a haircut.” When his hair gets long, starts curling on the ends, she says he reminds her of his father.

Yuri runs a hand back through his dripping hair before he gives it up. 

“Fruitless?” Otabek suggests.

Crossing his arms, Yuri leans in the doorway and fixes him with a look that should have killed him on the spot. “Don’t worry, Doctor Altin, I’ll shave him bald when he’s sleeping.”

His mother, in cahoots with the enemy, chuckles. “Actually, I was going to give him a haircut, if you want to help.”

“What, does it take two people to tame the mane?” Yuri asks, expression growing even more wicked, if that is possible.

“Sometimes.”

Yuri cards through Otabek’s hair and wets it as his mother snips away, and when Otabek strains enough to look at them both in the mirror, they’re working away together like old wives together.

“Giacometti needs to change his coach,” his mother tells Yuri. “Her touch, maybe okay when he was younger, but as he matures, he needs to change his game. People like Ji and Kenjirou, they’ll outpace him.”

“Kenjirou, do you think?” Yuri asks dubiously. His fingertips pinch Otabek’s earlobe, and Otabek frowns in the mirror, making him pinch harder. “He plays like an amateur.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of a good attitude,” his mother says, and Yuri pinks.

Otabek lets himself feel fond about it only when they dust off his shoulders, let him straighten up, and he finds that his scalp isn’t bald in chunks.

 

“See? Look at him! Why won’t you ever let me do _your_ face?” Evgenia steps aside to show off Yuri.

Hair pulled half-up half-down, glitter painted up his cheekbones, and tank-top shredded, Yuri is a vision. It’s not lessened by the hand on his hip, the cockiness on his face.

“Zhenya, I trust you with my life,” Otabek begins. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Are you going to tell me he doesn’t look good?” Evgenia gestures to him, emphatic. 

Otabek stares at him, and he wills the heat down from his cheeks. “I’m not saying anything that will get me into trouble.”

Yuri tucks his hair behind his ear and grins toothily at him. “That’s new. Now hurry up and get ready.”

“I am ready, Yura.” 

Both Evgenia and Yuri stare at him, unimpressed.

_Fem(me)s._ Yuri bought him this jacket! Otabek frowns as Yuri steps forward and adjusts it so it lies flat, running a hand across the tiger stripes on the back for good measure. Or just to fluster him more. He could bank on either at this point. 

“At least his hair is passable.”

“He’ll be in the DJ booth, anyway, so no one but us will have to suffer seeing him.” Evgenia adjusts the purse on her shoulder. “Come on!”

DJing when he’s become a recognizable Kazakh athlete is a risky venture, but the lights will be dim, and he will be under a pseudonym.

When Otabek was fifteen, he met Evgenia. His mother tried to take off work whenever Otabek visited, but she only had so much leave, and she’d had to take some sick days that year, so he hung around the university that week like he did when he was a boy underfoot in her lab. Evgenia was still doing her bachelor’s then, and she along with some other people in her cohort were sitting around shooting the breeze in his mother’s office.

Otabek was trying to watch some tennis clips Doug sent him for technique, but the women had other ideas. They teased the stocky, serious boy. “Are there any girls you like in America?” “Have you had your first kiss?” Otabek was unresponsive (no; yes).

It was only when the others filtered out that Evgenia apologized to him and said, “I don’t know why they were asking all those questions, you’re obviously gay.” 

Now he looks back at it with appreciation--she was the first to say it to him and the last. Otabek loves beautiful men, and no one sees that, most importantly those beautiful men. Of course, there’s safety in it, too, but there’s something about being looked at by one of his own and _recognized._

At the time, he tensed, fearful, caught-out. She was quick to reassure him, “It’s okay. Me too.”

“With women,” he suggested stupidly and she giggled at him and agreed, “The other kind.”

This place Evgenia picked, it’s the same and it’s different. The club that was their stomping grounds three summers ago is gone now, so there’s this one--much the same, strobe lights and the reek of alcohol, dancing bodies in the dark. In the air, the crackle of the forbidden. It is not a gay club in name, but it is reputed as an LGBT-friendly spot for those in the know.

“I’m going to go get a drink,” Yuri shouts in his ear. “What do you want?” 

Otabek shakes his head and gestures to the DJ booth. “Set in five.” To sweeten the deal for Otabek, who is more reluctant now than he was in his adolescence, Evgenia promised him a DJing gig. Yuri also professed eagerness at that.

As he snugs his earphones down around his ears, he watches Yuri. Yuri cuts a path through the crowd and as Otabek plays the first song, something light with a good beat to it, he leans into the music and dances, dream-fluid. He’s selected some to Yuri’s taste, some to Evgenia’s.

The music darkens and dips, and the flashes of visibility through the fog show Yuri and Evgenia dancing together, Evgenia’s long black hair swinging and Yuri’s blond rising in a halo around his head. 

Yuri’s swan arms above his head, pearly in the changing lights, and he throws his head back.   
Head turning, he holds Otabek’s eyes, runs his fingers down his own forearm and biceps and lifts his bare shoulder, and Otabek’s paralyzed.

Otabek has a new Tansy remix for Yuri. The first few seconds, Yuri keeps on moving, nodding along with the beat. And then his eyes stretch wide, and he sees him laugh, nothing but happy. He sways into it anew, every roll of his body in rhythm. Hips hypnotic. Swiveling on his heel, he blows a kiss up to Otabek.

His set ends. Otabek hands it off to the next DJ and instantly forgets her face. He saw Yuri cross over to the bar, so that’s where he joins him.

“You want?” Yuri offers him a sip of his tennis-ball-colored concoction. 

Grimacing, Otabek takes a tentative sip. It tastes acid-sweet.

“Fucking _mind-blowing_ Every song, better than the last. I’m serious. I’m not gonna accept any other DJ after you.” Yuri tugs at his lapel before he downs his drink, throat working as he drains the yellow-green drink down to dregs. Teeth crystalline white in the shadows, he tugs the pineapple off its skewer, then tosses it away somewhere, then grabs Otabek’s hand. “Dance with me.”

Feet like lead, Otabek lets himself be guided to the center of the dance floor. He stands there like an idiot, just staring down at Yuri, the shine of sweat, the pink of skin.

“Hey, Beka.” Yuri gives him that rare, shy little look. Magnetic. “Dance with me,” he repeats.

So Otabek lays his hands on Yuri’s waist, and it’s not the bravest thing he’s ever done, but his heart doesn’t remember that now. They dance close, but their bodies do not touch. Both of them are athletes. Doesn’t make any sense that they’re breathing so hard. 

“We can’t do this,” Yuri rasps. Draping his arms around Otabek’s neck, his head sags, his pants hot and frantic against his throat.

“I know.” Otabek’s hand spreads on his lower back anyway, and he tugs him another terrible little bit closer.

“It’s already bad,” whispers Yuri. “We’ll make it worse. We’ll make it impossible.”

This, Otabek wants to scream at him, _this_ is impossible. But he only sweeps his thumb back and forth along the base of his spine, where his tank top rides up some. 

Yuri reaches for both his hands, and he pushes his fingers through Otabek’s. Palm-to-palm, they dance like that, like they come from a world where they can’t touch. They do.

This was a bad idea. Otabek drops one hand and tentatively tips up Yuri’s chin. 

Under his dark eye makeup, his green eyes blaze. He thumps his fist on his chest. “Fuck, Otabek. I can’t even look at you sometimes, I can’t--” He swallows hard. “Sometimes just looking at you fucks me up so bad.”

Otabek wraps one arm around his waist and cups the back of his head and there in the middle of the dance floor, men and women and those in-between moving together all around them, he just holds him. He knows. He knows. Too soon, he will have to let go.

In the back of Evgenia’s car, Evgenia who painted rainbows across her cheeks this summer, they lace their fingers on the seat, and Evgenia doesn’t say a word.

In his mother’s house, his mother up too late only lifts her head for a tired smile, and she says nothing to them either as they go down the corridor together. 

It has to be past 3 AM now, and they’ve adjusted to Almaty time, so it feels as late as it is. Completely clothed, they fall into bed. 

Otabek pushes the pillow back between them again. 

He rolls onto his back, and he stares at the ceiling, filled with pressure from the oxygen in his lungs to the blood in his veins, and nothing can release him. Nothing will release him.

Fingers. Fingers skimming his shoulder. Down his biceps. Strong, callused hand folding itself sweetly into his own. Bringing their joined hands up to the barrier between them, Yuri interlocks their fingers and squeezes once, hard enough to hurt. 

It doesn’t hurt enough to make letting go hurt less.


	10. Chapter 10

“You’re on camera all the time, man. I don’t understand you,” Lauren says doubtfully.

Shooing an ant off his leg, Otabek shrugs. He recently did a photoshoot which went from awkward to cripplingly uncomfortable when he had to strip off his shirt for it. The photographer had told him not to be so _coy._ “Different.”

“Look at it this way, maybe with all these shirtless spreads, you’ll finally get laid.” Standing, Lauren moves to a higher rock than him and suns herself like a lizard.

Southern Sunday mornings, everybody’s too busy talking to God to climb mountains and talk to the sky. Which suits Otabek just fine.

Lauren pokes his shoulder with her sneakered toe, and Otabek screws up his face at the smell. “So what are you planning for Leroy’s bachelor party? This might be your audition for planning mine someday, so you better make it good.” 

He folds his hands on his stomach, sighs. “Skiing?” The idea of being Lauren’s best man someday warms him more than the sun, conditionality or not.

“Uh.” Lauren’s pause speaks volumes. “ _Skiing?_ You sure between the two of you, Leroy’s not the virgin?”

“He likes skiing,” Otabek tells her stubbornly.

“One stripper,” Lauren says.

“He’s Catholic.”

“One.”

After some contemplation, Lauren suggests, “She can dress as a nun.”

“That’s worse.”

“Is it?” Lauren digs her toe below his shoulder-blade. “Well, jot that down for mine, then. Sounds like fun.”

Otabek decides no response of his could be particularly productive.

“Anyway, I might not be a matchmaker like you, but I could be your wingwoman if you would give me the chance,” Lauren coaxes. “At least let me return the favor.”

Not since Almaty months back now has he been to a gay club, though he has halfheartedly DJed with Tansy deselected from his sets. He feels a heightened awareness of the narrow bounds within which he’s working. Lauren told him Evgenia cancelled her subscription to some gossipy online mag after a writer commented jeeringly on a picture of Popovich, the second-most heterosexual man playing the ATP World Tour only because JJ exists, in makeup after a concert, “There’s only room for one gay story in tennis.” 

Besides, he barely wants to DJ anymore, let alone dance with some twink or God forbid, go for a stilted coffee date where they will politely leave a berth around the subject of tennis.

He doesn’t know how to tell her he doesn’t want anybody, doesn’t want anybody (doesn’t want anybody _else_ ), so he just throws his arm over his eyes and sinks against the sun-baked boulder.

 

Otabek downloads Tinder, then deletes it.

One, it’s a risk. He remembers the Olympic Village Grindr stunt. Two, he doesn’t need to swipe on anybody to know he won’t get who he wants.

Rolling over onto his stomach, he stares at the ceiling. His fingers drift over his stomach.

For a guy his age, Otabek probably has a _low_ sex drive. He’s training hard with few tournaments to play right now, so he’s so drained that he’s really got nothing most days. He and Yuri have picked back up their cycling competition (today, Yuri managed more kilometers than he did).

His hand’s just slipped into his sweats when he realizes--he’s _thinking of Yuri._ Yuri, who he has to face on the courts to further his career, easily now his greatest rival. Too many emotions have already been brought into the midst of their tennis. They don’t need any more. Yuri is competition. Yuri is also a man. Yuri, who he can’t have.

Otabek groans, not the way he wants to, and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He’s supposed to be getting himself off, and here he is, heart-aching.

Opening his laptop again, he pulls up the mixed doubles match at the Hopman Cup he was watching, Mila and Georgi looking to defeat the Crispino siblings. Ignores that his entire suggestions bar, along with other things, is Yuri, Yuri, Yuri.

 

Chulanont walks off the court with his Sydney Open runner-up trophy as cheerfully as he walked onto it. Otabek really loves playing him. They had some spectacular rallies. In some ways, he’s warming to hardcourts, but he still can’t wait for the clay season a few months from now. 

In the locker room, Otabek shakes the towel through his sopping hair.

“You heard of this singer Antsy?”

Otabek stares at Doug, who’s evidently looking her up on his phone. _”Tansy?”_

“You know I don’t listen to that Top 40 bullshit, son.” Sometimes when Otabek’s drilling Doug will subject him to bluegrass. “Tansy, sure, yeah.”

“What about her?” Otabek asks, wondering if he’s about to be subjected to ambiguously misogynist invective and wondering whether it can’t wait until never.

“She was here.”

“Here?” Otabek’s not really keeping up with her schedule.

“Yeah, here,” Doug says impatiently. “What are you, a parrot? She was watching your match.”

Otabek closes his mouth. He’s not so much starstruck as just caught off-guard. Tansy was watching his match? Sure, celebrities come to see players’ matches. Most often, they’re other athletes. At the Kremlin Cup, the entire Russian figure skating delegation from the 2018 Winter Olympics showed up to watch Yuri. There are always Kazakhs in the crowd for Otabek and some of those have been models and minor TV actors. International attention still feels--strange.

“This is a bop,” Doug tells Otabek after a moment of glowering at his phone. One earphone in, he saunters jauntily out of the locker room, apparently jamming to top Tansy tracks.

 

The angle on this ball is insane. Otabek nearly pitches over getting it back--he does get it back. Racing back to the center of the court, he balances as best as he can and goes into his backhand. The power generated off of the next shot makes him grit his teeth and push harder into the point.

This has to be the most _visceral_ tennis he’s ever played. Every plonk of the ball plays along his nerves, the sweaty twist of his hands on his racquet shoots into his core.

Love-forty, and it’s not Otabek’s serve, but it’s still not acceptable.

The ball falls from his hands. Hits the court. Three times, and the noise almost irritates Otabek somehow, he’s so jittery. He returns sloppily and pays for it. There’s no painting the corners for him--with the amount of traction he could get after Otabek fumbled his return, Otabek can’t do anything about it.

The game goes to Yuri.

For the past two months, they haven’t spoken voice-to-voice or face-to-face. They have texted on occasion, talking of Giacometti’s new coach, Nekola’s wrist injury. Nothing beyond tennis. Nothing beyond their first life.

Fighting is one thing, albeit none have been so vicious as the one over Viktor’s sponsorships. They lash out, then stop as soon as they start. Sometimes Otabek thinks in the moment that Yuri might never speak to him again. But there is a gulf between that and knowing that while Yuri will speak to him, they will not speak like they did before. 

The silver threads have snapped.

Otabek swears his whole body ripples with his serve, and Yuri tears after it, ripping it back across the court just as hard.

This here, this is power tennis. They meet each other blow for blow, and by the close of the second set, they’re pouring sweat.

It feels like they’re fighting. But they’re not fighting. It’s a mutual agreement. A cold conclusion.

On the benches, Otabek does not look over once at Yuri, and his stomach caves in when Yuri’s eyes move past him like a shadow.

What he had with Yuri, it was beautiful, but it was brief. And if he was meant to have it, he would still have it.

He finishes his forehand high and fast. Whatever he might deserve, he can work hard and earn more than that. Here at the Australian Open, he is the defending champion. The title is his to lose.

Fierce, Yuri whips his racquet for winner after winner.

Otabek’s on the back foot. He’s on the defensive. All he’s trying to do under the battering force of Yuri’s strokes is hold his ground and return the ball within the lines. That’s a mistake. Not his first.

Yuri paints the corners with _him._ He has Otabek dashing from one end of the court to the other. When Otabek draws back for a full-on forehand, Yuri drops it short. There’s no winning. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. 

Yuri pockets the third set.

Otabek’s first two serves bump into the net. He glances towards Doug in his box and then looks back down. Gritting his teeth with frustration, he serves again, now down love-fifteen. 

Yuri cuts the ball out of the air with a slice Otabek can’t return. Both hands back on the racquet, he rolls it from hand to hand and returns to ready position. 

Down love-thirty now. Otabek takes deep breaths. Jittery, he bounces the ball a handful of times. This serve is in and has some real power behind it. 

Yuri runs up and returns, redirecting Otabek’s spin.

Otabek counters quickly, taking him back in the court, pushing him back.

Yuri’s shot touches down out of reach in no man’s land.

Love-forty. The game is slanted towards Yuri. Otabek doesn’t believe in miracles, but he does believe in the power of his mind and his body. Otabek’s last shot hits right at the baseline. It isn’t called out.

Yuri challenges.

Shocked, Otabek straightens, the clapping of the crowd spiking at his spinal cord. It’s _out._

“Mr. Plisetsky has three challenges left,” calls the umpire, as correct challenges do not count against a player’s allotted number for a set.

He knows, rationally, that it’s nothing Yuri has against him. He’s using the fair range of tools in his arsenal in order to secure a win for himself. He feels numb anyway. To Yuri, who has come this far by his single-minded dedication as much as his stroke-making, this is just another match, and Otabek is just another opponent. Otabek must think that way as well. 

That belief is shaken two games later. 

“Are you joking?” Yuri stalks up to the umpire. “You’re joking. That ball was in!”

“Would you like to challenge, Mr. Plisetsky.”

“Yes, I would like to challenge!”

The ball is, indeed, in. Otabek winces. It’s not so much that Otabek regrets the loss of the point as he regrets that Yuri has been vindicated in his skepticism. Otabek goes on to hold his service game just barely, pulling out at forty-thirty. He’s already down a break, however, and unless he breaks back, they’re really just playing a waiting game.

Otabek dips the ball on Yuri’s serve, and it’s too low and close to the net for Yuri to hit any kind of shot off of it. Deuce.

The next point, Yuri hits a bad unforced error. Bad. His follow-through is nonexistent and the ball pings into the net-pole.

He can see Yuri’s shoulders, rigid. Yuri paces, then taps the racquet against the hard-court. Taps, does not throw. It’s still unsettling.

Since his debut at the Wimbledon, Yuri has not softened. But he has been able to bring his temper down from a boil while on the court. Against Otabek specifically, commentators have noticed that his demeanor is nearly _sweet._ Not so much a wild child as a kid just happy to be out there in the sun and playing.

Otabek has to stay in the moment, in the point. Now it’s Ad Altin. Racquet twisting, his ball bounces far behind the line. Unfortunately, another unforced error. Back to deuce.

Every last point of this match, Otabek _feels._ Muscles ragged, breath hot in his chest. He senses when his racquet reverberates wrong. Deep in his ears, he hears the grunts that accompany Yuri’s power shots.

Of course he’s always sensitive to the mechanics of his body and the environment around him. It’s key to anything this kinesthetic. Yet playing Yuri has always felt extrasensorial, like after a while the petty twinges of body fall away and his mind soars above it into serenity. Receiving Yuri’s beautiful shots, even on the backfoot, feels like he’s being given a show. Not like he’s being beaten to the ground, even when he is.

Not this time.

The wind picks up like a tidal change, and into it, Yuri serves two perfect aces and wins the match.

“Thank you to Otabek Altin,” Yuri says, and it’s perfectly courteous. Not stiff. Not cold. All of that is the overlay of Otabek’s mind. 

Otabek pushes his mouth into something polite as he holds his runner-up trophy to his chest. He doesn’t begrudge the cup to Yuri in the least. Yuri played excellently. That’s not why can’t bring himself to look at Yuri biting the trophy. It’s not about losing. Or, it’s not about losing the _match._

 

Otabek wavers.

“Ideally, we could have you come in tomorrow. What do you think?”

He thinks, first of all, that this is insane. He’s some plain-faced nobody. Sure, he has tennis titles, but he’s just a professional athlete, hasn’t crossed over into celebrity. 

Tansy wants him to guest star in her upcoming music video, dancing with her in a club scene. Dancing _on_ her, really.

Otabek doesn’t personally care for Tansy, has only added more of her to his playlist since Yuri. Lately, he has been shuffling past those songs. And he can barely do a shirtless photoshoot. How is he going to gyrate with someone--a _woman_ \--in a music video that, statistically, will be seen by _millions?_

He doesn’t have long to think about it. It was the night after his Sydney Open win, en route to the airport, that he received the call from her agent, and tomorrow night, he’ll be flying back to his home courts. If he’s doing this, it’s now or never.

One motivation is money: additional exposure to sponsorships outside of Kazakh companies and tennis-specific brands. It would show _star power._ Another--he thinks, despite himself, of Yuri dancing, of Yuri blowing a kiss to Otabek.

He adjusts his phone against his ear. “Well--”

 

Otabek squeezes his pillow over his ears. Incessant, his phone continues to yell at him. It takes him a few exhaustion-scalloped moments to realize that it’s not his alarm. It’s a call. Pawing for it, he sleepily sticks it to his ear. 

“Otabek? I know it’s late, I just--” Yuri’s voice is tight, teary. “I needed to talk to you.”

Anxious, Otabek asks immediately, “Are you all right?”

“ _I_ am. It’s my grandfather.” A frustrated sniff, and Otabek’s chest collapses. Not Nikolai, not Nikolai, a kind man and Yuri’s corner-stone. “He’s in the hospital.”

“What happened?” Otabek is already going for his laptop to pull up Expedia. 

“He _fell.”_ Yuri exhales, shuddering. “It was only his back this time, but it scares the fuck out of me. He’s conscious and everything, but they’re definitely going to have to get a look at his back after this. It just scares me that he’s over there all alone in Moscow. I ask him again and again to move in with me, but he…”

“He wants his independence,” Otabek says quietly, “and so do you.”

“Yeah, but. I _know_ that, but what if he hadn’t been able to call? What if he was just lying on the floor and nobody knew?” 

Otabek thinks of frail Gulnaz next door in Almaty, more like a grandmother to him than his own blood, and how he stopped believing she would live forever when he was fourteen and she cracked her chin on her front steps. “I know. I know how you feel.” Yuri makes a little noise at that. “Is anyone there for you right now? Yakov? Mila?”

“No,” he says, almost sullen. “I didn’t want to be treated like a child while I was trying to make medical decisions for my family.”

“I can come,” Otabek offers, direct flight to Saint Petersburg already pulled up on screen.

That brings Yuri up short for a second. “No--what? No. It’s about to be spring clay season. You’re going to sweep it.”

Otabek leans forward against his knees, yearning for this brave boy. “Yura, you don’t have to do this alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Yuri tells him. “Right?” Another sigh, somewhat more controlled this time. “I can call you again, though? I--I can take care of him, sometimes I just want to talk to someone about it.”

_“Please,”_ Otabek whispers, ardent, longing in his chest giving way like a burning building to grief.

 

The metallic stripe across Yuri’s shirt flashes under the Barcelona sun. Otabek feels hopeful.

“Yura,” he says, so quiet the umpire a meter away might hardly hear it, “ _davai.”_

Yuri’s eyes move up to his face, and his mouth softens. “Beka.”

That nickname, once a vague annoyance, is like a lick of chocolate.

And they dance.

Otabek really has to lean into it, but he breaks Yuri’s serve to win the first set 6-4. Yuri is having exactly none of that. In the next set, he waltzes them right up to the tiebreak. There, they go and go, and he wins it 12-10. The third set, too, goes to the tiebreak, and Otabek only wrests it from him 15-13, the crowd shouting _Ot-a-bek, Ot-a-bek_ at his back. 

6-4, 7-6, 6-7. More trouble than anyone’s given him at Barcelona the past two years.

After, Otabek’s so wired and giddy that he can barely believe he played three sets of tennis. He lingers in the locker room for a while, but Yuri bypasses him and leaves with Yakov and Lilia, though he does text him a customary _congratulations!_

It’s only when Otabek’s back at the hotel room debating where he should take himself for dinner--or ask JJ? JJ might be busy romancing his wife-to-be in the beautiful city, and at this point, wedding planning has grown so feverish that hanging out with JJ might not be a great method of unwinding--that he works himself up to text Yuri. Thumbs-up emoji, plus a still of Yuri punching the air after a winner. _Good match._

Yuri replies _gratifyingly_ fast. _u only say that bc u won  
btw did u see this shit??_ No less than six crying laughing emojis, then the source of mirth: a screencapped forum post of “The Many Faces of Otabek Altin,” every frame of which is Otabek’s resting stoic face. _i’m getting this on a tshirt s2g._

Otabek smiles to himself. _Dinner?_

This reply takes longer. _got karaoke invite_

_You + karaoke = ??_

_2 late_  
theyre at the door  
2 l8 4 me ssave ursel f 

Otabek stares at the text for a long moment, then dashes for jeans, socks, motorcycle boots. He catches Yuri on the way out of the lobby surrounded by a gaggle of other players, skidding to an awkward halt.

Yuri’s lips twitch, and it’s clear he’s holding back a grin.

Giacometti has no such qualms, full-on cheesing. “Otabek Altin will be singing karaoke? Good thing I cleared my phone memory, huh?”

Before stepping through the revolving door, Yuri mutters, rapturous, “You are _fucked.”_

For the first half an hour or so, Otabek and Yuri skulk in the shadows, managing to avoid attention while the gaggle of other players shake their hips and pinwheel their arms. And then Nekola sees them as he’s dismounting the stage and, no doubt looking for revenge from when Otabek rescued Yuri and left him for the dogs, points with both hands at Otabek.

Otabek sighs. Shedding his jacket, he takes the microphone and steps up onto the stage. While he might be uneasy around media scrutiny, he never had nightmares about showing up to play tennis in his underwear or anything. They’re all embarrassing themselves for entertainment. “Ah--” He scratches his head with the backside of the mic, trying to decide from the list of song choices. Pop and ballads and emo are all shouted at him, and Otabek shakes his head, wanting to make a quick pick.

Then the whole stage shakes like an earthquake. Yuri has literally jumped in with both feet. Wiggling his fingers, he acquires a second mic and announces, “We’re going to do ‘Now Is Your Beginning,’ by D4NG3R.”

Oh _God._

Yuri waggles his eyebrows at him, and Otabek hides his laugh in a cough, heart floating on feathers in his chest.

The opening drums start up, and Yuri swaggers up to Otabek, pushing a finger into his chest and belting the opener.

Yuri Plisetsky can beat any ATP-ranked tennis player in the world. Yuri Plisetsky can wear a potato sack and make it look like Gaultier. Yuri Plisetsky can make pirozhki that would make God cry. 

Yuri Plisetsky _cannot sing._

That lovely, deep voice Otabek adores breaks and bends painfully around the melodramatic lyrics. Otabek does his best to keep up the duet with his own cracking voice, but by the end he has to signal for mercy, bent in half on one end of the stage.

Yuri plants a foot on his knee and assassinates the closing note.

“Never again,” Otabek tells him once he’s caught his breath back, sagging half-across his bike.

“I’ll call ahead for next year.” Yuri’s eyes are sparkling at him, and how did he go without this? He’ll never know.

Otabek gestures to his bike. “Where to?”

“Park Guell.” Yuri climbs on first. “Got my license. Climb on, Sir Otabek of Altin.”

He’s glad Yuri’s turned around so he can’t see the softness of Otabek’s expression as he mounts the bike behind him.

The ride is more than pleasant, and soon they’re looking out on golden skies.

Otabek resists it, but someone has to say it first. “I missed you.”

Yuri shrugs. Purposefully obtuse, he asks, “Why? I wasn’t any farther away from you than I usually am.”

“Yes,” Otabek says quietly, “you were.” And he has always missed him.

At that, Yuri makes a disconsolate noise. He was apparently hoping that Otabek would play it cool. But now the time has come for them to _talk_ about it, actually talk, and not wait for the issue to resolve itself in a half-measure. 

“Yura…” Otabek can think a big game, but that doesn’t mean he knows what to say.

“We can’t go on like this. I have to--we have to--” All the pink that blooms over Yuri’s cheeks can’t be attributed to the sunset. “I like talking to you, and I don’t want to stop.”

Drawing himself slightly upright, Otabek crosses his arms over the edge of the wall, studies him. “We can’t go on like we were,” he reminds him.

Yuri’s expression contorts, and he looks like he wants to throw something. “I know _that._ ” Instead, he sticks his hand out, the expression so aggressive his short neat nails should have speared Otabek like one of Michael’s homoerotic Wolverine sketches. “Are you going to be friends with me or not?”

Otabek blinks at him for a long moment, though his hand is already moving down. His fingers wrap around Yuri’s for a formal, short shake. “Friends.”

For just a second, Yuri squeezes harder, then lets go, their hands dropping. “Friends,” he echoes with a determined nod.

Then they stand together in resettling silence. Not the same. No more silver threads. But something, something they can hold onto this time.

“So if we’re friends…” Yuri looks at him from under his curtain of hair, then tucks it behind his ear. 

If Yuri can ask him to double-date with--sorry, _play doubles against_ \--the clingiest gay couple on the planet, surely Otabek can ask him this. “So I was thinking,” Otabek begins, “as friends, we could go to JJ’s wedding.”

“As friends,” Yuri repeats. Then, with more incredulity, “Leroy’s _wedding.”_

Otabek clears his throat and clarifies, “As my plus one.”

“You want me to come with you to see that jackass be joined in blissful matrimony?” Yuri folds his arms across his chest. “As your plus one?”

“Plus one friend,” Otabek offers lamely.

Yuri rubs his arm with his shoulder, shakes his head. “Whatever.” After he looks skyward, he gives a long-suffering sigh. “Send me the dates and details, and I’ll check it depending on my calendar. And how much I care. Which isn’t a lot--so don’t get your hopes up, or anything.”

That’s all Otabek has been doing all day.


	11. Chapter 11

Rumors trickle out about Yuri and some ballerina, then Yuri and Mila, then _Otabek_ and Mila.

“What are they _on?”_ Yuri sputters. _”Baba?”_

Then Mila gets an undercut, and that’s the biggest news anyone has ever heard.

Yuri rages, “Don’t these people have jobs?”

Otabek neglects to point out that they do, they’re just not doing them very well.

 

Yuri and Otabek attempt to practice with Viktor and Yuuri before their match.

“Is this happening?” Otabek asks incredulously when Yuuri scrapes his elbow and Viktor spends a good five minutes fussing over it.

“This is happening,” Yuri confirms. “Hey, assholes! The puppies aren’t going to pay for themselves!”

Puppies and kittens is a _nauseating_ theme, but here Otabek is, street credit gone, playing to donate to the cats of an animal shelter while his competitors play to donate to the dogs. At least Yuri seems to be having a good time, griping away happily all morning.

The match itself isn’t much better.

Otabek didn’t expect to _win,_ but this is still embarrassing. 

Yuri doesn’t seem to know how to share the court, and Otabek continues to be more or less useless at the net. Yuri pulls out some incredible volleys, then nearly crashes into Otabek running back to try and hit back to Yuuri and Viktor instead of just letting Otabek control the back of his half of the court. Yuri’s overhead isn’t quite so charming when Otabek is just trying to dodge the backswing of his racquet. 

Definitely shouldn’t have winged it, but here they are, sharing one side of the court and trying not to kill each other.

They don’t kill each other, but Viktor and Yuuri wallop them.

Enjoyable to see, really. Otabek does keep up with doubles back at home when he can, but it’s always nice to see players live. He loves watching their clockwork movements and their on-court give-and-take, humiliating defeat at their hands or not. 

By now, Otabek knows them fairly well. He’s accustomed to Viktor’s accidentally acerbic tongue, Yuuri’s bouts of self-deprecation, and accepts them as yet more surrogate parents for Yuri, though Yuri himself continues to deny he has family beyond his grandfather. 

Otabek will run into Viktor and Yuuri at any Grand Slam, especially when they’re always begging Yuri to tag along with them on their excursions and Yuri’s always tugging Otabek along behind, but not some of the smaller ATP tournaments. Europe is usually okay for the couple. They have not, however, returned to play the Kremlin Cup or the St Petersburg Open. Tournaments like the Qatar Open, countries where people are imprisoned for implicit homosexuality in public, are--iffier.

Here in Miami, Viktor almost climbs Yuuri kissing him, Yuuri slots an arm under his thighs to keep him upright as he kisses back with enthusiasm, and Otabek and Yuri look anywhere but at each other.

Later, weaving a path between the palm trees barefoot, Yuri says, “You know, this isn’t going to work, Beka.”

Otabek, preoccupied with rolling a coconut over with his toes, looks up at his face. “Hm?”

“We just want different things.” Yuri rolls a coconut over to him with his foot and tips his head to the side, eyes sparkling. “I like serve and volley, you like long points...it’ll never work.”

“Or,” Otabek says, “you’re a diva.”

“A diva!” Insulted, Yuri turns away, chin up haughtily.

“You’ll never find a doubles partner, Plisetsky,” Otabek teases him. When Yuri huffs and lifts his chin higher, Otabek pulls back the collar of his tank top and dumps a handful of sun-warm sand down his back.

Yuri texts him pictures later. After their “sensationally fun” match against Viktor and Yuuri, they were apparently pursued by paparazzi. Otabek studies the photographs. 

Here’s one that served as a headliner. 

He and Yuri leaning against the railings of a dock, Yuri in his sleek sunglasses, black tank top, little white shorts, gesturing something excitedly to Otabek. Otabek listening with raised eyebrows, sunglasses perched on his head, black jeans and white t-shirt with rolled-up sleeves, unintentionally the inverse of Yuri. The caption? “Frenemies--the Plisetsky-Altin bromance continues off-court!”

Otabek wants to throw his phone, but he just texts back a standard thumbs-up emoji. Frenemies? _Bromance?_ They look like a fucking salt-and-pepper shaker set.

 

“Madrid final, great match,” de la Iglesia tells him. “Congratulations.”

Otabek, distractedly going down his last-minute mental checklist, thanks him politely. 

De la Iglesia, Otabek, and Yuri will be the only professional tennis players attending the wedding, with the obvious exception of the groom himself, JJ. Alain Leroy cautioned JJ against a wedding full of famous players and fanfare; he had one himself and professed it to be miserable. JJ, already capitulating to Isabella’s desire for a more intimate ceremony, reasoning that they would have plenty of time in the spotlight before and after the wedding. 

So Otabek’s job is only three-quarters as nightmarish as it could have been.

“Here he is! The man of the hour!” JJ slings an arm around Otabek’s shoulder. He’s sweated through his white shirt and tuxedo jacket, which Otabek knows because he can feel it. Otabek hates his job.

“That would be you,” Otabek drawls.

“You’ve worked so hard on this. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Thank me by getting married.” Otabek looks back over at the bridesmaids and for the third time this hour, counts them again. The church is tastefully decorated, the scent of lilies light on the breeze. “Without a hitch.”

“Without a hitch--? But I’m…”

“Don’t.” Although Otabek supposes over the years of their friendship, he’s really only encouraged this with his own sense of humor.

“Getting hitched! _Hi,_ princess!” JJ waves madly, and Otabek turns to see Yuri.

They shared a hotel room (a double), and they have been more or less orbiting around each other this morning, so it’s not the first time Otabek’s seeing Yuri in his tuxedo, but every time takes his breath away. 

The crisp, well-tailored fabric of the jacket makes the V of his torso trimmer than ever, and the contrasted with the stark white of the shirt, Yuri’s eyes shine green as the spring outside the cathedral windows. The fit of the slacks show the shape of his thighs, and those long, long legs all in black, striding so confident and controlled. As if that wasn’t enough, Yuri’s wearing just a dab of cologne, and whatever it is, it’s mouthwateringly masculine.

_Princess?_

“Nervous, Leroy?” Coming up to Otabek’s side, not quite close enough to touch, Yuri tucks his hands into his pockets.

“Ha! No. I’m very excited. We’ve been waiting a long time.” True enough; it was a longer engagement than Otabek was expecting. JJ looks back and forth between him and Yuri. “Did you forget to bring a girl to the wedding?” JJ laughs and Otabek’s blood freezes. “Or did you get kitten here mixed up with a girl?”

Yuri has never liked JJ and has never made a secret of not liking JJ. Has this been his problem all along? One hand balling at his side, he says, very levelly, “Why would I bring a girl when I could bring Yuri Plisetsky?”

JJ’s eyes flick between them again, and he laughs again, but it’s with clear nervousness this time. He senses his misstep. “Ah, of course.”

Otabek’s jaw stays hard.

Yuri’s still tense--Otabek knows because he can feel him stiff along his side. But he must be thinking that it’s JJ’s wedding, and it’s on him to take the high road. Otabek doesn’t know how well he can guess his thinking when he’s just committed such a huge oversight. Otabek doesn’t really know that Yuri should be taking the high road. Regardless, Yuri pats Otabek’s shoulder and steps back. “Catch up with you later, Beka.”

“Beka?” JJ is trying hard for a smile, but it’s wobbly. “I like it. Beka and Bella, my two favorite people in the world.”

Otabek isn’t having it at the moment. “JJ, it’s your wedding day, so I’m going to say this and then we can move on. You’re my best friend, but if you speak to Yuri like that one more time, one of those things might change.”

At first, JJ looks shocked. It might be because Otabek for once has spooled out a full sentence to display the depth of his displeasure. It might actually be because he’s sorry. Then JJ wilts, and Otabek knows that he’s sorry. And Otabek--knows that JJ has crippling problems with insecurity, didn’t really have to trim down his side of the guest-list _that_ much, but he can’t muster much sympathy for him right now. “O, I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Otabek softens slightly. Slightly. “But when you have a moment, he’s the one who deserves an apology.”

The hubbub wears on, doesn’t wind down. Somewhere in the middle of it, JJ steals out from the knot of his siblings and under Otabek’s watchful eye, goes outside to apologize to Yuri, who’s dodging a knot of Yang cousins in the garden.

Red-faced, rolling his eyes, Yuri more or less waves JJ off after a few moments of JJ gesticulating. He glances over through the window straight to Otabek, like he has a sixth sense of where he is, and he gives a minute shake of his head.

 

JJ’s hands shake all the way through vows, and when they kiss, he’s crying, Isabella’s crying, Otabek’s pretending not very hard that he’s not crying.

Otabek can hardly keep his own hands from trembling when he holds his notes for his best man speech. In the end, he folds the paper and drops it to the table, then manages to finish, “JJ is like the brother I never had, and I’m glad JJ is not my brother, but I’m happy to welcome Isabella as my sister.” Then he sits, abruptly. 

JJ bursts into tears again. Isabella hugs his arm. JJ says, “Brotabek.”

So in the end, the ceremony goes off...without a hitch.

Yuri stays and claps through the couple’s first dance, then hovers through the next few before he goes to sit in the corner. Otabek waits until it can’t possibly be rude for him to peel away a little, then meets his eyes from across the crowded, chaotic room and jerks his head at the doors.

In the garden, they wander, and it’s like Miami, and it’s like Barcelona and Melbourne, St. Petersburg and Almaty. They have been here before, and they will be here again, and they never progress farther forward, just circles traced out in different countries and continents, concentric and endless, always coming to the same end.

Still a moment Otabek will enclose in the amber of memory for good.

“Some of this music isn’t god-awful.” Arms behind his head as a cushion, Yuri lays himself down on a stone bench and stares up at the stars. 

“First dance song?”

“Passable,” Yuri opines, “but not what I would have picked.”

Otabek looks at him, prompting.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about what I would pick,” Yuri says, like it would have been ridiculous to think of something like that already. “What, have you?”

“Yes,” Otabek answers. He decides not to impart titles.

“You had a hand in it, right? Some of this music?” he asks hopefully.

“Other people have music taste, Yura.” Otabek _is_ touched by the loyalty. He sits down on the other end of the stone bench. It’s cold through his thin suit pants. Yuri’s hair looks incredibly soft.

“I’m insulted by the lack of Tansy.” Yuri’s full-on no-shame embracing her these days, to Otabek’s quiet delight. “Like, ‘Unforgettable Eyes’ is totally wedding song material. There’s like, an acoustic version and shit.” Planting a foot on the bench, Yuri worms upright in an inexplicable yet hypnotizing movement. And then his head lands in Otabek’s lap.

Oh.

His hair _feels_ incredibly soft. Otabek gently moves his fingers through it, stroking the blond strands where they come free of his bun. In a bold move, Otabek tugs gently. Undoes his bun, snapping the tie around his wrist. Keeps stroking through his hair.

Yuri lets out a soft sigh and sags against him. Tipping his head back farther, he holds Otabek’s eyes. His lips curve just a little. “I like this song.”

They’re doing very well at this _friends_ thing, Otabek can tell. 

Otabek, for once in his life, was not listening to the music. He cocks an ear, listens for it. “Mm.”

“Quick, before it’s over.” Yuri flings out his hand for Otabek.

Otabek stares at his perfect fingers for a beat too long.

Friends.

“Dance with me!” Twisting around with some impressive gymnastics, Yuri grabs both of Otabek’s hands and draws him to his feet with ease.

Flustered by his strength, Otabek squeezes his hands for a moment to steady himself. Up close, he can smell his honey shampoo, light sweat, heady cologne. “Inside?” he asks hoarsely.

The moon fills Yuri’s wide eyes. “Do you want to dance with me inside?” Hushed, like a secret.

Otabek looks up at his face, and he steps into his chest. Wordlessly, he winds his arms around his neck.

“It’s cliche either way,” he relents in a mutter. His breath stirs Otabek’s hair.

Intellectually, Otabek knows others have suffered as he has. He knows others have rejoiced as he has, too. And yet sometimes he can’t help but feel that they are the only ones in the world.

Yuri’s arm settles heavy around his waist. Alone in the garden, they sway together past the last strains of the song, until heartbeats are their only metronome.

 

Otabek should have known better. His short ball sits up on the clay (it’s his surface, he should have known better), and Yuri flies at it with his racquet extended, brings it up from the ground at an impeccable angle. Ball lands across from him and too far back to touch. Not a chance. It’s perfect. Can’t even be angry about it.

Backing up behind the baseline, clay scuffed under his shoes, Otabek gets ready to receive Yuri’s serve. Right away, he hits a powerful serve, and Otabek pumps his arm into it, returning it with effort. Though never noise. He’s always silent on the court. JJ told him after the US Open that sometimes, he was unnervingly so. That rally goes on maybe fifteen shots, he isn’t really keeping count, and then Otabek hits a big winner off the back of the baseline. Also in silence, Otabek pumps his fist. 

Yuri hits a powerful ball all the way into the other side of the court. It should be a winner. Should be. Otabek, especially when it comes to Yuri, isn’t especially good at believing in _should._ He races it down and returns it, off-balance, then surges back to the center of the court. Yuri’s shot is down the line and just out of his reach. Well-played.  
New balls. The bounce off them off of the sweet clay is sweet, too. Otabek serves, and Yuri surges them into another long rally.

By the close of the third set, Otabek’s lungs burn. He’s trying to control his breathing as he wipes himself down with the towel. Yuri looks even worse for wear, red-faced, sprawling over the back of the bench with a little noise. But they both jog out, and they begin again.

Yuri dashes into the alley, stretching out his long arm to return Otabek’s shot. He leaves the court wide open, and Otabek swings his big forehand with a splash on exactly the opposite side of the court.

Following up on the next point, Yuri holds the rally, then hits a ball right at Otabek’s feet, making him trip up and run around and not quite make it, the ball thunking off the net-cord.

Stupid, stupid Otabek drops another short ball again, and then Yuri comes in with this gorgeous half-volley better suited to the Wimbledon than Roland Garros, but it makes it over the net, and Otabek doesn’t make his way over to it in time.

Yuri starts them off with a powerful serve in the eleventh game of the fourth set. Otabek throws his body into it, and Yuri’s running up too close to the ball, cutting short his statue-pose follow-throughs. But he keeps it up, and Otabek keeps after him. Then Otabek jumps up for a big overhead, and Yuri nearly wipes out onto the clay returning it. Running around, Otabek goes for a butter-smooth backhand, and Yuri’s momentum is too far in the other direction for him to scramble back for it in time. Otabek’s lucky, too--the ball was a hairsbreadth inside the court.

In the fifth set, 3-3, Yuri on serve, Yuri’s second serve looks a little iffy, but Otabek’s pretty sure it’s in and goes in for it. Yuri, who’s already used up a challenge, has issue with it when it’s called “Fault!” 

Otabek is completely aware that Yuri hates this chair umpire specifically (When they were watching some women’s doubles match on screen-share, Yuri once muttered, “Fuck you in particular” at the chair ump after a series of points marred by distractions). Still, he agrees with him this time.

Even the Hawkeye footage doesn’t really convince Otabek, and while he’s not going to argue a point in his favor after the umpire and technology both backed it up, he does exchange a sour look with Yuri on the benches. A chair umpire with bad calls isn’t good for either player. 

The umpire makes another dubious call on what should have probably been a winner for Yuri, and Yuri uses up his last challenge contesting it. No doubt Yuri’s already drafting his complaint. 

That he’s being so patient about it is a testament to his mood being on the up. Grueling match, but a good one. Otabek doesn’t want to give himself too much credit, but he does give himself a little.

On Yuri’s next service game, he serves a whopping 140 miles-per-hour serve, and Otabek knows exactly what’s behind it. He’s also behind it, trying not to get scalped. Yuri wins that game from forty-love.

Otabek wins the next game from forty-fifteen. Then, forcing Yuri back behind the baseline with shot after shot, he at last, at _last_ successfully drops a tricky shot close to the net. Yuri manages to reach the ball, which most wouldn’t, but it’s dead in the air, and his shot doesn’t clear the net.

As adept as Otabek is at this surface, he’s clocked more hours in his lead-up matches to the Roland Garros final than Yuri has, cutting the advantage of his greater endurance when they trip into the fifth set. Yuri may not be a clay-courter, but he has confidence here as he has on any and every court, and his skills are versatile. 

Celestino, coach to many ATP greats and a one-time French Open champion himself, said in a well-publicized interview that Yuri Plisetsky was the second-best clay player of his era. Doomed to be such? No. Otabek can never count on that, nor would he want to count on it. Yuri’s gnashing his teeth for this, wanting his fill of the one Slam cup he hasn’t bitten into yet.

So it’s a spectacular battle. 

Yuri’s unexpected toothy grin down at him adds an extra sheen to the Coupes de Mousquetaires Otabek lifts high.

Otabek signs the sweatshirt-- _how,_ in this heat--of a moody-looking kid, and Yuri retaliates with a bigger, loopier autograph overlapping Otabek’s on the girl’s back. When Otabek turns to glance and wave back at the crowds before they duck out of the court for good, he sees that she’s drawn her hoodie strings tight, leaving only a circle of her blushing face.

 

“Coach, we can finish up here,” Otabek’s hitting partner Bradley says midway through Sunday afternoon practice, hands on his hips. He’s a relatively new permanent fixture in Otabek’s team--up until after his US Open win, Otabek was mainly rotating through people at the tennis club where he plays. “You look like you use the rest.”

Doug, one among many hard-headed people Otabek knows, isn’t usually one to have off days. He’s like granite, craggy, never-changing. Today, he adjusts his hat over top of his head, shakes his head. “Yeah, all right. Otabek, keep using that backhand slice to your advantage.”

“Yessir,” Otabek says. While usually Doug only gets _sir_ these days when Otabek’s sassing him, he’s worried about his coach.

Once practice with Bradley is over, he takes his bike over to Doug’s house. Unmarried and without kids, Doug fills his life with other things, but Otabek still thinks rattling around in that big house that used to be his parents’ has to be _lonely. somebody_ now, huh?” the chef there, a good friend of Doug’s, teased Otabek after his first French win, then thwapped him upside the head with his menu.

“What happened today?” Otabek asks after at least half an hour of Doug trying to talk to him about baseball statistics. “Church?” he guesses.

Doug lifts off his cap and scratches his head with a sigh. “Yeah. Church. Our new choirmaster quit.”

“Already?” Otabek remembers him signing on just a month ago.

“He complained that he didn’t have to listen to--what did he say? ‘Homophobic vitriol.’” Doug scratches the back of his neck with his cap. “Hell, we didn’t even know the guy was gay.”

Otabek goes cold. “So homophobia is fine,” he says measuredly, “as long as gay people aren’t around?”

Doug stares at him. “Jesus, son.” Uncomfortable, he shifts, then looks back over his shoulder, sighing. “What do you want me to say?”

Otabek says nothing.

“I wasn’t involved in the mess, anyway. No fault of the congregation.”

No fault of the silent masses, who stared and did not speak up? Otabek shakes his head minutely, but Doug isn’t looking up.

“It’s unfortunate, is what it is. I think he took what was being said in the sermon the wrong way..” Otabek, who knows well the kinds of sermons given in Doug’s church and the kinds of people who listen to them, highly doubts it. “Ah well.” Doug downs his Diet Coke (this place doesn’t serve alcohol on Sundays). “Andre will be missed.”

“Andre?” Otabek’s fingers curl around his fork.

“Yeah, Andre, you parrot,” Doug says impatiently. “Why, you know him?”

Otabek suspects he knows him _biblically._ “Big, tall man?”

“Sounds like the one,” Doug says, nodding. “He go to your school or something?”

Now or never. Otabek exhales. “No,” he says, “but we dated.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Doug’s saying before he’s really processed Otabek’s answer at all. Then he sets down his glass, mouth like a fish. 

“For five months.” Otabek holds his gaze.

“Andre?” Doug says. _”You?”_

“Me,” Otabek agrees sardonically. No matter what Doug does now, he won’t be able to take away this moment from Otabek, this moment of freedom from a truth that has been knocking around inside of him for years, years. “Andre.”

Doug leans back in his chair. Silent for a long time. A worrying amount of time. Looking away, he jams his hat back onto his head, rubs his forehead underneath it. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Otabek doesn’t want to say anything that would hurt him. “I wasn’t ready.” More precisely: _Doug_ wasn’t ready.

It’s clear the gears are grinding like crazy in Doug’s head. He’s still not talking much. Pushing his glass between his two hands, he clears his throat. “Is it, was it JJ? I’m--I’m sorry, Otabek. That must’ve been hard.”

For a moment, Otabek, overestimating him, thinks that he’s asking whether he’s come out to JJ. Then he realizes. “No,” he says emphatically. Just no. “No.” He shakes his head for good measure.

Doug’s eyebrows jump up. He looks unconvinced. But he does some more scratching, some more thinking and--oh _no._ “Then is it…”

“It’s not anybody,” Otabek tells him, throat closing like knuckles. He looks down. If he’s going to be honest, he should be _honest._ So he breathes out. He says, such a dagger-twist aloud, “It’s--nothing’s going to happen. Between us.”

Doug, who’s still processing all of this, somehow has the presence of mind to reach across the table and clasp Otabek’s shoulder tight. Overwhelmed, it’s all Otabek can do not to break down.

It’s as late in Montreal as it is over here, but he gives it a try anyway once he’s back in his apartment.

“O,” JJ says, warm and excited, and Otabek curls a hand into his shirt over his heart and tries to keep it together. “I was going to call you tomorrow! I have big news.”

“Me too.” Not _news._ Hasn’t been news since he was thirteen, Otabek thinks, but apparently he is largely alone in that. Otabek’s afraid of losing his nerve, but there’s no good method of launching into this. 

“Ooh. Me first.”

Otabek holds in his laugh, which might have a hysterical tinge at this point. “What’s yours?”

“Isabella and I…” JJ pauses dramatically. “We’re going to start trying for a baby!”

A baby. Privately, Otabek still thinks they’re all babies. The news knocks the wind out of him. “Trying?” he clarifies, questioning with mingled wonder and fear whether his best friend might already be on the road to fatherhood.

“Yeah, you know.” JJ’s voice slides into smugness. He can _picture_ the eyebrow wiggle. “Trying.”

Otabek groans. This has to be payback for years of Otabek trying to make JJ blush.

JJ laughs. “I know! I know. I’m happy too.” Clearing his throat, he asks, “So what was your news, then?”

Ah. So he won’t be swept away in JJ’s good-natured self-centeredness for once. “Mine isn’t as good.”

Back in 2016, in an interview he caught a quick looping clip of when he was nursing his wounds after losing the Monte Carlo quarters to JJ, JJ was asked what it was like to play his friend Otabek Altin. JJ said then, exuberant, “He fights for every point, and he doesn’t stop. Otabek is always the same.”

Otabek wants to stay that constant in JJ’s life, now, forever.

“Haha, well, of course it isn’t.” A pregnant ( _ha_ ) pause from JJ. On the other end, he can hear what sounds like the TV still going. Isabella is ruthless, won’t pause her shows for hell or high water. “Okay, so what is--”

Otabek has no delicate touch. He’s not good at elegant setups. All he can do is run headfirst, bull in the china shop, and hope not to break anything he can’t bear to lose. Otabek blurts, “I’m gay.”

All he hears for about a minute is the TV. They are the longest seconds of his life. Excruciating. Between one tick of the second hand and the next, everything could collapse on his head. Exruciating.

But really, in terms of real time, JJ recovers fast. “Well, you know that I still love and accept you--not that I love you like that--”

Relief floods his system. “Me neither,” Otabek tells him as fast as the words will make it out of his mouth.

“Oh, okay. Not that I thought...I mean, if you did, it would be fine. Have you seen me?” JJ half-laughs. “Uh.”

“Um.” Otabek decides not to put it delicately. “Gross.”

“I’m wounded,” JJ says. “You’re very handsome. If it wasn’t for Isabella, who knows?”

“Every day,” Otabek deadpans, “I am grateful for Isabella.”

“Hey, I’m being supportive. Right?” Uncertain. “Actually, how am I doing?”

“You’re doing good.” Otabek feels like a heel for doubting him. 

“Right. Good,” JJ says, relieved. Then his voice softens a little with hurt. “You...you waited so long to tell me. Did you think--?”

“I was wrong,” Otabek says, pained. “I’m sorry.”

“ _I’m_ sorry.” It’s so sincere that JJ just makes this worse. “I’m sorry I ever made you think like that. I’m sorry, O.”

Otabek rubs his chest, his shoulders dropping. These conversations have utterly drained him. “Go back to Isabella before she finishes a season without you,” he tells him, full of nothing but affection now.

“Are you sure? I don’t know, there’s so much we haven’t talked about yet. I want to keep talking about it,” JJ reassures him.

“Later,” Otabek tells him. Later, there will be time to talk of Michael, of Andre. Of Yuri, Yuri, Yuri. _Later._ He can’t take much more today. “But--thanks, JJ.”


	12. Chapter 12

Yuri rests a hand on his lower back, shifting foot-to-foot as he answers a post-match interview question. “Yes. It’s very difficult to break here, so I just try to maintain my serve and then do my best on other points.” To no one’s surprise, he has just won an early round Wimbledon match against an unseeded player Otabek does not know. Serving is a big part of winning on grass.

“Going forward, who are you most worried about facing?” the interviewer asks him from offscreen.

Yuri looks straight into the camera. “Worried?” he repeats, the single word dripping with incredulity.

“Ah, well, I suppose I could ask it like, who do you think is your biggest competition at this tournament?”

Hand on hip, Yuri says grudgingly, “I suppose you could.” He shifts again and scratches his eyebrow. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of this tennis player, he’s called Otabek Altin?” He smirks. “I wouldn’t say _worried.”_

Otabek texts him, _Get worried,_ and Yuri fires back, _give me a reason._

 

Otabek watches Yuri’s semi while still recovering from his own. Lee pulled out all the stops, all the flourishes, eked out every last point, and there were time periods when Otabek seriously thought he was going to go home before he would have a chance to contest the Wimbledon trophy again. 

They _love_ Yuri here in London. Of course, Otabek can’t say he doesn’t understand.

_”Yuri!”_ shouts someone in the crowd just as Yuri tosses up the ball for his serve. Irritated, Yuri lets it drop, head swinging around. 

“If we could save it for the changeover, ladies and gentlemen,” says the umpire.

Yuri seems to snort. He throws up the ball again and despite the distraction, serves up a neat little down-the-line ace.

On his next serve, Yuri begins bouncing the ball. Just the movement of his wrist, that in itself is a thing of beauty, a delicate flick behind his wrist-band.

And it happens again. “Yuri!” someone yells once more. This time, exponentially more audaciously, “Will you marry me?”

“I don’t know,” Yuri says without missing a beat, the camera loving up the tilt of his mouth and the lift of his brow, “how much money do you have?” 

Laughter erupts through the stadium, even some of the grave line umpires smiling. With weary humor, the chair umpire chastises, “Let us also save proposals for changeover.”

Yuri of a few years ago, a chip on each shoulder, would have never taken an on-court distraction so lightly. During the French final with the shitty umpire, even, he was positively jovial in comparison to the angry adolescent he had been. At twenty and change, he’s grown into himself, devastatingly so. Before his face falls away into seriousness as he starts to serve again, Yuri smirks wider.

Otabek bites his knuckles and replays the clip.

 

“Davai,” Otabek says as he passes Yuri at changeover.

“You don’t say it in the middle of a match!” Yuri hisses at him, unflinching at the look from the umpire.

Are there such strict rules? Otabek, unbothered, hunkers down to receive Yuri’s serve. He’s always far back behind the baseline, knowing the power he can generate. He’s been getting up into 130 mph consistently.

The volume of the crowd is an equal split between the two. It would be distracting if Otabek were playing anyone else, maybe, but when Otabek is playing Yuri, his focus _transcends_ absolute. 

Not that the court wants to make him look that smooth.

Running across the court for a ball, Otabek slips on the torn-up grass. He face-plants. Still manages to get it across the net and when he levers himself upright, sees with _disbelief_ that his sloppy shot landed inside the court and where Yuri couldn’t return it.

When Yuri hits across the court at an extreme angle, zooming off into the doubles alley, Otabek refuses to let it go. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Otabek runs so far off to the side that he leaves the court open wide for Yuri to lob the ball wherever he likes. 

But he still chases the ball down and chases it so far that he can’t really stop unless he wants to crash. Otabek careens onto his side of the court and only skids to a halt at Yuri’s _baseline._

Yuri grins at him, and Otabek raises his hand and wiggles his fingers in a little wave.

This is why clay is the superior surface.

They play hard and fast. Clouds move overhead, the sun moves in and out. Every time Yuri gains ground, Otabek beats him back down, only for him to pull out even more winners and aces. And then Otabek will drive him around and around the court until his ball flies too short or too long. It’s _great_ fun.

He’s completely absorbed in the interplay of their racquets. Tennis, Doug tells him once, is the only non-contact sport that is a _duel._ While there are a handful of solo sports 

Seldom is Otabek reminded of the crowd. One time, when they’ve finished an excruciatingly long rally at the end of a game, Yuri lifts his white shirt to wipe his face while walking over to the bench. His taut abdomen pops in relief with the sweat shimmering over it and the dusting of his golden hair. The crowd whistles and hoots. Yuri holds his shirt there for just a second too long before he drops it, shaking his head like he’d disappointed with them all.

Straight-faced, Otabek sends his first serve down the line, a ball Yuri can run to, but because of its spin, cannot hit back to any effect. Not that Yuri will ever know, but he deserves a pat on the back for his superhuman concentration.

Otabek feels like he barely has to blink and then it’s the fifth set, _again_. Don’t they always push the match to its maximum? Controversially, the US Open has a tiebreaker in the fifth or deciding set, while at the French, Australian, and here at the Wimbledon, the last set will be played until one player has a two-game advantage over the other. 

So when they hold 4-4, hold 5-5, and Otabek serves on 5-6 and barely scrapes a hold in between a double fault and a moon-ball Yuri murdered, he knows the kind of fight that he’s in for today.

They’ve been playing for four and a half hours already. If Otabek has to win this in a sweaty slug-out, so be it.

With age, Yuri has proven his ability to push past fatigue. When he walks out to serve the next game, there’s a positive spring in his step. He’s playing smart, though, not just hard. Quick and clever serve and volley combinations--luring Otabek up to the net like the spider and the fly and when he’s snagged him, splashing the ball behind him with a punch of his racquet. There’s not much Otabek can do on Yuri’s serve--not that there ever is.

After barely clinging to his serve three games in a row, Otabek finally falters. He has two second serves in a row, sickly and simple for Yuri to manipulate how he likes. From thirty-fifteen, Otabek is now down fifteen-forty. This is critical. This is the match.

Otabek catches his lower lip between his teeth. Remembers that painful practice in St. Petersburg when Yuri made him serve every game. Serves. In. He leaps onto the ball, slams it across the court and it spins crazily away. Yuri stretches his racquet out and bounces it back with a cry of exertion. It’s a slow ball, a moment too long for Otabek to decide what to do. And then his body decides for him, a brutal backhand slice. By the time his palm slaps back down onto the racquet, he knows he’s saved one break point.

Still down thirty-forty. There’s work left to do. He has to make it deuce, then push past deuce. His serve falters, and there’s a disappointed chorus from the crowd, who he has almost forgotten. Otabek startles slightly, then shakes it off. Second serve.

Before he tosses the ball up, he looks across the net at Yuri. Bouncing back and forth, beautiful blond hair and pink face. His Yuri. An obstacle and out of reach at once. 

Second serve.

Yuri flies off the ground and swings his racquet. It’s a fine, fine forehand, spinning like a film. Impossible to reach, let alone return.

The crowd roars.

Past the pounding of the blood in his ears, Otabek clutches his knees. Fifth set score 10-8, and it’s over. At this point, with his exhaustion, he’s almost grateful-- _almost._ He still wanted that damn Wimbledon trophy.

When he looks up, Yuri is sauntering towards the net, wagging a finger at him. _Number one._

No shame in losing to the world number one. No shame at all. Otabek presses his face to his shoulder when they hug and mutters into his hot skin, “See you next round.”

“Going to kick your ass on an international stage, _again,”_ agrees Yuri. “For Russia!”

In nine days, the Olympics. Otabek holds his runner-up plate to his chest and poses with Yuri, and he’d like to do this forever. Just maybe swap positions sometimes.

After he takes his celebratory nibble, Yuri hugs the big metal trophy to his chest, eyes shining. Wimbledon number _four._ He has surpassed Viktor Nikiforov. Of course, in Otabek’s eyes, he has surpassed everybody.

 

“The tempura, Beka. The soba,” Yuri whines.

“Sounds like you’re about to start soba-ing yourself.” Otabek’s still stuck in an airport en route to Tokyo while Yuri has been navigating the Athletes’ Village and apparently, narrowly dodging the seduction of Tokyo street food.

“Why do I feel that you’re not taking my suffering seriously?” A huff into his phone. “Anyway, I’m the only one not like, succumbing to temptation over here. There’s _so_ much drinking. And sex. So much sex.”

Otabek swallows. He’s in loose joggers sitting on top of his baggage and not prepared to have a conversation with Yuri Plisetsky and his lovely, deep voice about sex. “We’ll get soba,” he suggests. “Loser buys.” This way, it’ll work out even with JJ regardless of result, who has insisted that at this point they have a strict _winner buys_ policy.

“Yes, _please._ Tell me you’re sick of coconut water and bananas being the closest things you get to dessert! We live in a world where _mochi_ exists, Otabek. I could walk onto the street and get mochi, but I have something called self-control and--” A loud bang. “Fucking hell!”

Otabek rubs his forehead slightly. He can only hope that Team Kazakhstan is keeping out of trouble with their spotty recent history.

“Yeah, like I said, it’s like, complete, wild indulgence here.”

“Hedonism,” Otabek suggests. “Bacchanalia.”

“Shut up.” Another huff. “Oh--so. I started rereading _Peter Pan.”_ He rustles pages. “I have a new theory I wanna share with you.”

“Oh?” 

“I don’t think you’re Peter Pan.”

“Hm. Don’t want to hear it.”

“Hey! Listen,” Yuri protests. More rustling. “‘Until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth,” Yuri reads aloud.

His voice stills him. Shivers walk cool paths down Otabek’s spine. 

“‘Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes,” Yuri murmurs, “one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more.”

Otabek’s cheeks color, and he closes his eyes.

“And her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.’” Finishing, Yuri pauses when Otabek does not immediately respond. “Beka?”

“Am I Wendy?” Otabek asks, purposefully obtuse. Yuri thinks he has a _sweet mocking mouth._

“No one is Wendy,” Yuri says immediately. _Wendy’s a bitch,_ he remembers Yuri telling him outside that store, what feels like ages ago now. Although he can clearly delineate his life into before and after Yuri, it still seems to him that he’s known him forever. “C’mon. You get it, Beka.”

He gets it.

_Peter Pan_ partial rereads happen often, and while he doesn’t always make it to the end, he does always pass the first page. He remembers the passage well: Mr. Darling got all of Mrs. Darling, JM Barrie says, except that innermost box and that kiss. Mr. Darling didn’t know about the box, and he eventually gave up on the kiss. Wendy thinks Napoleon could have gotten the kiss; JM Barrie disagrees.. “You think it would take Napoleon?” He’s dismayed and pleased at the same time.

Yuri’s quiet. “I don’t know what it would take.”

“I--” Otabek swallows. “I wouldn’t let Napoleon have the kiss.”

“Or the innermost box?” Yuri asks, hushed as a brush of lips or secret locked puzzle himself.

As his flight begins to board, Otabek stands, cradling the phone between ear and shoulder. “ _Napoleon_ wouldn’t know about it.”

 

Specifically for this, he downloaded Snapchat. Before they walk out for the Parade of Nations, he checks excited snaps from everyone from Zulfiya and Evgenia to Lauren and Michael. Is that _Andre_ in the background of Bradley’s Olympics watch party? Unlike some of the other athletes, he pockets his phone before everything begins. Kazakhstan is fortieth, so there’s not so much of a wait.

He has always been clawing upwards. Grinding every single hour. His recent Grand Slam successes still don’t make _anything_ feel like a sure thing, which is good. Never too good to get comfortable. After not playing the Davis because of his knee last year, he made it a little farther this past season, but he won’t be making it to November. 

But he qualified. He made it to the Olympics. He will be representing his country.

 

For tennis, the Olympics don’t hold as much prestige as they do for other sports. More important to win at the Wimbledon and at Roland Garros, the natural surface majors. There are no ranking points even associated with the Olympics for ATP players.

For Otabek, this is carrying the glory of his country on his back, and nothing could matter more. It’s an honor and a duty at once.

Walking out in front of the whole world, Otabek hoists up Kazakhstan’s flag. His palms sweat, and he clutches harder. This, everything has been leading up to this for him. Colors swirl dizzily around him, his ears full of the din of the crowd, and his heart won’t stop pounding. Lifting his hand, he waves to where he knows his mother and his coach are seated, hoping they can see him in the sea.

Canada has come up just a little ahead of them, and JJ waves madly to him. Otabek returns it with his free hand. 

When Japan parades somewhere in the hundreds, Yuuri and Viktor, arm in arm, blow kisses. Otabek does _not_ return those, but he does nod back. Viktor, chased out of the country who nurtured him, playing for Japan now for love, for love, _incandescent_ with it as no one saw him during his singles’ career.

In the whole gabble of the Russian delegation, he somehow manages to spot his favorite Russian tennis players. It’s mostly because of Mila’s bright red hair and how she keeps stopping to take selfies with Yuri. When Yuri sees Otabek, he jumps up and down, and for far from the first time this night, Otabek has to drop his stoicism and grin. He might get the chance to play this crazy kid in the Olympics finals, and he might even get the chance to beat him.

As diamond-focused as Otabek might be on medaling for Kazakhstan, in the thickness of his anticipation, he can still live in the lightness for a moment.

 

Yuri plays his semifinal against JJ.

Yuri loses.

 

With every match but the final three sets, it’s a much shorter path to the men’s singles Olympic final than the four majors’. Everything goes too quickly and too slowly at once.

The fervor in the air is palpable. Individual success-seeking is enough to propel the feet, but the chance to represent one’s country powers the very blood. And in this sense, the mental game of the Olympics is very different from any other tournament. Physically, running across the court, swinging the racquet, each match feels much the same as any other, but gazing up into the stands shakes him into the reality of what he’s doing.

Nevertheless, he plays as doggedly as ever. No one gives him too much trouble until Nekola in semis. He’s on the backfoot for the first set and Nekola breaks him twice in the second before he recovers. He plays every point like he was going to go home if that shot wasn’t perfect. And he didn’t go home. The last set was 6-2.

Yuri’s semi is nail-biting, too. Yuri played as brilliantly as ever. He still delivered. Still had few unforced errors. But JJ was in rare form. Otabek, to his shame, has forgotten JJ’s talent. His down-the-line backhand, his court coverage, _spectacular._ Yuri just can’t make up the difference.

He’ll be facing his best friend tomorrow instead of his--Yuri. Mired in mixed feelings, Otabek calls JJ and tells him how much he looks forward to playing him. He calls Yuri, but Yuri does not pick up.

Luckily, he does answer with a text: _n/w, nekola’s getting that bronze OVER MY DEAD BODY  
also davai davai davai!!! i want this win 4 u! next time i see u better be w gold medal arn ur neck!!_

Otabek squints at his options and carefully selects multicolored heart emojis, tennis ball, and fire. He still has no idea what he’s doing. _Talk when you’re ready?_

_yes...thank u_

On the morning of the match, Yuri, who has secured bronze, sends him a last _DAVAI!_ That and one glance at his mother and Doug in his box once he is inside the stadium is all Otabek allows himself. 

Now he needs to sink into the match and stay there.

The first set, JJ slaughters him lovingly with this one-two. He serves consistently wide and then returns Otabek’s off-balance shots to the far side of the court. While Otabek valiantly runs them down, even when he manages to return the balls, he’s off-balance for the next ball. This has been JJ’s killer combination since they were kids. Works now, too.

Otabek can’t let another set go. Not here. He powers up his forehand, fires down the line, cross-court, anything he has to do. His net game still isn’t strong, but he manages to scoop up a few of the balls and keep them in play. Keeping them in play is half the battle. If the rally passes ten shots or so, the points consistently go to Otabek. Otabek wins the second set tiebreak.

The third set, they’re both fired up wildly. JJ adores Canada; Kazakhstan is half of Otabek’s heart. Both of them want this _bad._

Otabek drives JJ back to the baseline again and again even as JJ tries to coax Otabek up to the net. One shot Otabek whacks all the way back to the baseline. He thinks the first bounce might be another ball-girl-basher, but JJ chases it down head-first. Legs splitting apart, he saves the ball with a shot from in between his thighs. Otabek scrambles to take the high-ballooning ball. With the pathetic amount of spin he put on it, and his bad placement in the court, JJ sweeps through the point with an easy backhand winner to the wide-open court on Otabek’s other side.

After that ‘tweener, Otabek knows he has to pick it back up. Displays like that and the crowd responses that follows it will make JJ untouchable. Otabek plays tons of cross-court shots, but the show of athletics when JJ has to dive for the balls frenzies the crowd and whips JJ into winners.

His serve, then. Otabek makes more first service errors than he wants, but his serve is faster and better. JJ doesn’t manage to break him, and when they get to the tiebreak, JJ chokes. The quick two-point switchovers work in Otabek’s benefit, and he bulldozes him.

By the fourth set, Otabek up two sets, JJ is too tired for diving and jumping. But Otabek still has to fight every step of the way. JJ plays cat and mouse with Otabek, and while he wins some points, he has _bad_ misses. Otabek has to quickly attack and capitalize on them. When Otabek slams his forehand right at JJ’s feet, JJ can’t run around in time and the ball flies so far it would have landed inside--that is, inside a second court, if there was one.

Otabek pounces, Yuri-style.

Running headlong down the court, Otabek hits a desperate shot and--oh, it might be a winner. But no, JJ’s running it down, and Otabek tenses and tries to move into a better position to return. JJ catches it with the rim of his racquet. The ball bounces just inside the net.

Oh--

_Oh._

A sob rips out of his throat, and Otabek drops to his haunches hard. He’s done it. He’s done it. He’s making a noise that might be laughing or crying, all euphoria, looking up at nothing. Olympic gold for Kazakhstan.

He staggers upright and wraps bear arms around JJ, and JJ fondly tousles his hair. JJ looks disappointed, but as he walks away from Otabek, he beams and holds out his arm to Isabella in the crowd, cheering for his silver.

To one side is JJ, the silver glinting along with the gold wedding band on a chain around his neck, and Yuri with his bronze proud on his chest. He would choose no one else beside him. 

“Representing Kazakhstan, Otabek Altin, gold medalist and Olympic champion!”

Otabek steps up and bows his head, his stomach twisting ribbons. The medal drops around his neck and hangs there with the weight of an embrace. The clapping crescendos, and he closes his eyes, overcome.

He lifts his head with the raising of the flags. There in the center, in the highest position, Kazakhstan’s blazing gold on shimmering blue. The first notes of the national anthem draw fresh tears down his face, and clutching his medal, he mouths the words. 

Sky of golden sun, steppe of golden seed. _Altın kün aspanı, altın dän dalası, erliktiñ dastanı--elime qaraşı!_ Legend of courage, take a look at my country!

The moment he’s allowed, Otabek runs up into the boxes. His mother’s eyes shoot wide open, but it’s too late. Wrapping his arms around her, he lifts her off her feet, light as a bird. “Ana, I did it, I did it!”

“Silly boy.” She hugs him tight again when he sets her down, then ruffles his hair. “Like there was any doubt.” 

“Proud of you, son,” Doug tells him gruffly.

Otabek turns on him. _Beams._

“Oh, no you don’t--”

He grabs his protesting coach off the ground and whirls him in a circle, his whole being sunshine.


	13. Chapter 13

Swarmed by press, Otabek does his best to keep pace. He answers the questions shouted in Kazakh first, then the ones in English. Answers a Russian one. Over the din, he can’t hear the translations of the Japanese. While he understands this is a moment for the world, he would have liked for it to have been a moment for himself a little longer.

Yuri, also being inundated, remains blase. There are very few people whose opinions Yuri cares about, and beyond some nominal PR gestures, he says what he wants to the press. 

In 2017, Yuri rose, meteoric, all the momentum. He won the Wimbledon and soon afterwards the US Open. JJ stopped him short in the Australian, but Yuri’s fans thought he wouldn’t be a serious threat continuing forward--while a classical, well-balanced hard-court player who has won Slams, JJ has always been one of the most psychologically shaky players, and he hasn’t gotten far on clay or grass. Otabek was among those fans who suspected that Yuri would have an easy path to a French win as long as he kept playing at that level.

Yuri kept playing at that level, but then _Otabek_ happened. And they have split the difference in tournaments since. Now Giacometti looks to be bowing his way out with grace, more or less, and JJ’s surging back to the top. Will it be three young players knocking everyone else down from the trophy stage? It is an exciting era, and it is theirs.

Over someone’s frizzy hair, Yuri meets his eyes. Cupping his hands at his mouth, he calls something Otabek can’t hear.

Otabek holds a hand up and gets a little more quiet, enough that when he cups his hand to his ear Yuri shouting “Your coach wants to talk! Outside.”

Doug--? Doug knows he has to talk to the press for a certain amount of time, and while that time has certainly passed, he probably wouldn’t cut it short. He also doesn’t think he’s _outside_ \--

Ah.

“Interesting strategy,” Otabek says to Yuri when he meets him outside. “Worked for you before?”

Yuri kicks the door closed behind them and ties his Team Russia jacket around his hips. Like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, Yuri says, “It was suggested to me by a friend.” 

Then he grabs Otabek’s elbow and runs. Otabek keeps up on tired feet. They pelt across the street and down between two shops and out into the air again.

Otabek looks at him as they stand under the awning of a restaurant under a pool of lamplight, holding back laughter.

“I’ve never seen you smile so much.” Yuri steps up to him, head tipping to the side, his eyes full of laughter, too. “So that’s all it takes? Just one measly medal?”

Otabek hooks his finger in the ribbon of Yuri’s medal and twirls it, corners of his mouth twitching. “Does this count as a streak?”

“No. I won the Wimbledon. Again. For the the third time.” Yuri’s eyes flick down to his mouth. Unmistakably.

Heat dives into Otabek’s stomach. Curling his finger into the ribbon, his knuckle just brushes Yuri’s warm chest. “Hm. Can I have one next year?”

“Hmm. Can I have a French Open?” In all the spectrum of street color, Yuri’s eyes are so, so green.

Otabek looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes his head no.

“Then no deal.” Yuri pushes his chest with the heel of his hand and stops holding back his laugh, face bright, body close. “Better keep moving.”

Otabek raises an eyebrow. He just played four sets. He’s not running any more. Stepping to the curb, he flags down a taxi.

They’re both quiet during the ride, slumped down in the seats and just breathing. Yuri looks over at him once, and Otabek holds his eyes for an electric second before he looks forward again. The taxi driver definitely eyes their medals with curiosity, but all he does is politely congratulate them when they pay.

Standing in front of the buildings of the Athletes’ Village, they stare at each other.

“How are you going to celebrate the big win, then? Joining the Bacchanal?” Yuri asks him, hands in his pockets.

Rolling up the sleeves of his team jacket, Otabek shrugs. “Thought we could finish that Alexander the Great documentary we were watching.”

Yuri’s eyes widen, then _soften._ “A-ha. Still with the Greeks.”

Something like that. Otabek leads them inside. The place is raucous tonight, and a drunk woman Otabek recognizes as a swimmer shouts “Cool medals!” at them before they step into the elevator.

“They are cool medals.” Yuri lifts his off his chest and holds his next to Otabek’s, smiling down at him.

Otabek bumps his shoulder against Yuri’s. Clubbing, riding his motorcycle, getting into trouble with Yuri are all _fantastic,_ almost as much fun as playing across from him. But he likes all the other weird little intimacies they have shared, too. Yuri trusting him to stay in his flat with his beloved cat. Yuri helping his mother cut his hair. With all they have, maybe they don’t need more.

“Hey, earth to Otabek.” Yuri elbows him out of his reverie. “I was just saying, I didn’t know the Kazakh national anthem’s first word was _Altin._ How much more Kazakh can you get it?”

Otabek rubs his thumb along the edge of his medal. “Altin also means ‘golden.’”

Yuri’s jaw drops, and he flounces out of the elevator ahead of Otabek, tossing his hair with the vigorous shake of his head. “No. That’s too much.” Outside of Otabek’s door, Yuri wraps his hand around the doorknob and then, remembering, glances back at him. “Key-card?”

Swinging his bag around on his hip, Otabek rummages around in the side-pocket. His fingers bump its straight-edges and lifting it out, he offers it to Yuri.

Yuri takes it delicately from his fingers and slides it into the door.

Otabek is so stupid. _Maybe they don’t need more._ How could he not want more?  
How could he not want his scoff, his sway of hair, his serve-and-volley? How could he not want all of Yuri, his collections of children’s books and tacky tennis gear, his on-court confidence and interpersonal uncertainty, his sharp tongue and soft spots? 

How could he not want everything when Yuri has consumed his heart whole?

There’s no getting out of this one, Altin. 

“Yura,” he murmurs. 

Something about the way he says it makes Yuri still and look back at him.

Those keen eyes cut him in two. Nonetheless, courage flushes him finger to toe. It will not be the bravest thing he has ever said, but it will be close. Drawing his voice out of his chest, Otabek tells Yuri, “I love you.”

The key-card slips inside, the light goes green. Yuri all but falls inside. Grabbing Otabek’s wrist, Yuri’s face blazes, feral in joy. “Fuck _yeah,_ you do. What the hell.”

Otabek kisses him hard.

Yuri slams him backwards, and Otabek kicks the door closed behind them. His back hits the wood, Yuri collides with his front, and it’s all Otabek can do to cling to him and kiss him and kiss him. 

Breathing harshly, Yuri breaks the kiss. His expression sheepish, he drops Otabek’s wrist. “I...”

Otabek reaches for his hand and tangles their fingers up together. Joins the silver threads for good. He grins, and he tips his forehead against Yuri’s. “You love me.”

Yuri laughs, floaty with that rare boyish self-consciousness Otabek adores. “I love you,” he agrees. “ _Fuck,_ I love you, you complete asshole.” He brings up their joined hands to cup Otabek’s face. Eyes flicking frantically between Otabek’s, he whispers, “How do you do these things to me?” 

Closing his eyes, Otabek smiles without reservation. He feels Yuri’s breath, then he feels his lips. Soft, a little cracked, sweeter than any dream. He tastes the tip of his tongue. As they kiss, their hands relax and fall away, until all that is keeping him anchored is the curve of Yuri’s body into his own. Otabek’s kisses slow and melt. At last, he tips his head back against the door, lip caught between his teeth.

“Fuck,” Yuri mutters. “I’m gonna die.”

Otabek squeezes his nape, his blunt fingers weaving into silky hair. “Let me up?”

Rolling his eyes, Yuri peels himself off his front, then grimaces at the stickiness. “You’re all sweaty.” That doesn’t stop him from kissing the salt off his neck.

Once Otabek steps away from the door, he starts backing him up, step by step, kissing him and touching him with every lift of his foot.

Yuri’s knees hit the back of the bed. With a sharp inhale, Yuri sprawls backwards on his elbows, chest heaving, roses in his cheeks. “Beka…God.” He smooths a hand up Otabek’s abdomen, and Otabek’s muscles jump in response.

Their medals. He removes his own gingerly, and Yuri follows suit, looping it over his head. Both take a moment to arrange them safely on the nightstand. They won’t be going anywhere until morning, anyway.

Otabek grabs the back of his shirt and pulls it over his head. Yuri makes _another_ gratifying sound, and Otabek swallows it in his mouth as hs kisses him again. Lifting up from his mouth, Otabek mumbles while he still has the presence of mind, “Okay?” Yuri, Otabek has gathered implicitly, has not done this before. Any of this. 

Yuri’s flush intensifies. “You ask the stupidest fucking questions.” His hands skim up to squeeze his waist, nails digging into him, and he kisses Otabek breathless again.

Hazy-eyed, Otabek asks between pants, “But are you?”

Fist thumping into his chest, Yuri spits, “Yes!” He swings a solid thigh over Otabek’s waist and straddles him like he’s going to eat him; Otabek values his life enough not to say anything else. Yuri climbs over him and sits up on his hips, then strips off his shirt in a hurry. 

Otabek stares. Yuri’s chest is sleek with muscle, dusted with blond hair, down to a tantalizing trail that disappears into his shorts. He hooks his thumb in Yuri’s shorts and tugs them down his hips. Then pauses in confused arousal. “Really?”

Yuri scoffs. “You didn’t expect it?” His eyes shine with mirth.

“Not in my _wildest_ dreams.” 

“If that’s a pun--” Yuri threatens.

 _”Never.”_ Otabek hooks a solid arm around Yuri’s narrow waist and flips them over, Yuri’s head bouncing into the cushy pillow. He grasps the waistband of his shorts and tugs them off completely. 

Obligingly, Yuri kicks off his shorts, and while Otabek sheds his own, folds his arms behind his head. 

Otabek takes a good, long look at Yuri in nothing but boxers patterned with black-and-white _zebra print_ and feels utterly reassured of his good taste. “I love them.” He runs his hands up the sides of Yuri’s thighs, and when Yuri spreads them willingly, he situates himself between them. 

Yuri locks his thighs around him and lifts his hips up, up, in demand or invitation or both. The tight boxers wrap deliciously around him, Otabek closes a hand over his bulge and rubs the slick spot at the tip. “Oh god, yeah, Beka.” Yuri’s hips jerk again. “Come on, touch me.”

Yuri is _mouthy_ in bed. Of course he is. Otabek touches him. Slow squeeze through the fabric before he snakes his hand into his boxers. Grasps the heat of him, and his cock jumps against his palm. It reminds Otabek of just how painfully hard he himself is.

Apparently, Yuri has not forgotten at all. Twisting his gorgeous body under Otabek, he rolls his knee over his trapped cock. “Shit, you’re big.”

Free hand clutching the sheets, Otabek gives his cock as much attention as he can in the confines of his boxers. When he thrusts, rides the round of his knee a little, Yuri looks like he’s won a fifth Wimbledon. The warmth of his regard makes Otabek turn his face even as he drops his boxers.

“You’re really big, Beka--” Yuri pulls himself out of his boxers, fumbling. Yuri’s big, too. Long as he lines his cock up with Otabek’s. “Really, really--”

Otabek kisses him to shut him up, huffing against his mouth. He rubs his palm over the precome-slick tip of Yuri’s cock, and Yuri _moans._ “Wet for me?”

“Yes.” Yuri moans _again._ “Don’t stop.”

Otabek’s hand isn’t slick enough, anyway, so he spits in it. Yuri flinches in surprise, but he quickly gets with the program when Otabek wraps his saliva-slick fingers around their cocks and strokes them together. “You’re so hard, Yura,” he murmurs in his ear, and Yuri thrusts against his cock and his hand, gasping. His irises are green rims like lakeshores, his full mouth bitten red and chest painted pink with sex. “Gorgeous,” he can’t help but say.

“Oh god, are you going to talk the whole time?” Yuri covers his face with both hands.

Grinning, Otabek ducks in to kiss the scarlet-tinged shell of his ear, a hint of jaw between trembling fingers. “Have a better idea?” He kisses down Yuri’s neck, mouth smudging over his Adam’s apple, reverent on his collarbones. Lower. Down his sternum, over the thump of his heart. He kisses the wiry hair around the base of his cock, heat-damp. Otabek’s mouth waters at his scent, dark with arousal, and he licks one very wet stripe up his cock.

Yuri cries out, hips knifing off the bed.

Otabek licks him again, then strokes the spit over his cock. He’s never fucked someone with a foreskin before, and he plays with it, dips his tongue inside to taste him. 

Yuri’s thighs shake, and reaching down, he strokes at Otabek’s cheeks with his beautiful fingers. “G-good idea.”

Otabek laughs against him. He’s worked him up so much that just the puff of air makes Yuri’s cock jerk. Otabek can’t help himself. Catching Yuri’s hand like a flower, he kisses up his callused palm. His tongue flicks between his fingers, and then he sucks at his fingertips. He envelopes his index in a warm mouth before he pulls off, cheeks hollowed.

When his teeth scrape the pad, Yuri whines and grabs his own cock hard at the base. “I _knew_ you’d be a tease.” He sounds resentful, but all Otabek can think is that Yuri pictured this, holding his cock just like this. 

So when Yuri gives his length a pump, Otabek lets him. He holds himself over him and licks over the top of his cock, then sinks his mouth around it. Yuri’s knuckles bump his lips as he goes down on him. Otabek bobs his head, eyes falling half-closed. He tastes salty-thick, and he’s so hot on his tongue. 

“Beka, Beka.” Yuri’s low voice cracks. “Beka, _please._ ”

After that, Otabek would do anything. Unwrapping Yuri’s fingers, he takes his hand and guides it to his hair again. Then he takes him deep. Deep as he can. His throat pulses around him. Mouth sealed tight around him all the way back up, he swallows him again.

Yuri’s breaths get faster. His hand fidgets on top of his head before his fingers curl into the short strands and scrabble for purchase, not really pushing, more _pleading._

Face smeared with the taste of him, Otabek sucks him hard, harder. What he can’t fit between his lips, he circles his fingers around and strokes fast until both rhythms align and then--

Yuri’s hips leap clean off the bed, and he comes.

Otabek swallows the first spray. Pulling off with a hoarse gasp, he works his cock quickly, mouth open so he shoots over his tongue.

Yuri’s nails scrape his scalp, and he moans his name like a sob. His cock jerks again, and he draws his foot up on the bed for purchase, thrusting so the head skids over Otabek’s tongue.

Determined to eke out his pleasure, Otabek lets Yuri guide his head down again, licking and sucking his cock, mouth used and wet and warm. 

“God, fuck.” Shaking under him, Yuri nudges his shoulder with his knuckles, then grasps at him, finally drained. “Seriously, you’re gonna kill me.” His muscles might be relaxed from orgasm, but he still manages to haul Otabek bodily on top of him.

When Otabek braces on his forearms to keep his weight off of Yuri, Yuri elbows his biceps until his arms go out from under him. “I’m heavy.”

“Yeah.” By the greed in Yuri’s kiss, Otabek supposes his weight must be just what Yuri wants. And what Yuri wants, Yuri gets. 

Otabek sags into the kiss, letting them press hot, slick skin-to-skin. By now, he’s painfully hard, and just the touch of Yuri’s thigh on the tip of his cock makes him hiss in need.

Not unsympathetic, Yuri licks his fingers and wraps them around Otabek’s aching cock, long slow strokes that he rolls into, fucking his hand. “Let me see you,” Yuri murmurs, eyes jungle-green slits under the fronds of his lashes.

Otabek braces his palm against Yuri’s shoulder--Yuri grunts his approval at the weight on him--and shoves his knee up by his hip. Then, head hanging between his shoulders, he thrusts, unable to stop now. Pleasure simmers in his stomach and melts his mind. 

As precome drips from his cock, Yuri swipes his fingers through it and sucks it off of them, his eyes holding Otabek’s as his fingers disappear to the first knuckle. Then he reaches around Otabek’s broad back, down and _rubs._

The circling of fingertips around Otabek’s sensitive entrance, just a suggestion, just a tease, drives him crazy. The bed shakes with his thrusts, and Yuri refuses to look anywhere but at his face, red cheeks and blown pupils, like he’s won something, _triumphant._

Yuri only has to crane up to kiss him for Otabek to lose it.

Head falling back from their kiss, Yuri watches him covetously when he comes. 

His cock streaks over golden skin, dripping white down his chest and sides. “Give it to me, Beka, show me, _show me--”_ A drop hits Yuri’s face and his tongue flicks out to catch it, lazy, self-satisfied. 

Collapsing down on his forearm again, Otabek kisses his way over to his lips and licks their come out of his mouth. The kiss dissolves into just breaths, and he shakes his head against him as his body and brain slide slowly down from their high. “Nnnh.”

“Yeah, where’s that vocabulary now? Oof.” When Otabek drops his weight on him again, Yuri just insinuates his arms around him and drums his palms on his shoulder-blades.

When Otabek lifts his head to peek at Yuri’s face, Yuri melds their mouths together. Yuri, Otabek finds, is a _fiend_ for kissing. If he’s searching for that secret kiss, Otabek wants to tell him that he’s got it.

Midway through toweling down after a hurried shower that was mostly one long underwater hug is when the exhaustion hits Otabek. Like a sack of potatoes, he flops down bare-bodied in the bed, and Yuri curls up cat-like, right in arms’ reach.

Otabek does reach over, to skim his fingertips down Yuri’s lovely face and tough biceps, then to take his hand.

Settling their hands in the middle of their pillows, Yuri blinks back at him. Then with a frown his eyes flick down, away. “Did we make a mistake?” His mouth’s shape shivers, vulnerable.

After the tumbling fire intensity of sex wore off, of course Otabek asked himself that, too. But he’s asked himself so many times before. They’re past the time for that in this moment, where suddenly he sees everything clear and sharp and knows they belong here in this bed right now and nowhere else in the world. 

“We did, Yura,” Otabek says, and Yuri tenses. “Every time before this.” 

Yuri’s brow smooths and on a laugh, his lips curve again. 

Over the pillow, Otabek links their little fingers.

 

“Smile! Or--something closer, anyway.” Yuri adjusts his arm around Otabek’s naked shoulders and then holds his phone up with his free hand to snap a selfie.

Uneasy, Otabek glances at his phone. To whom would Yuri want to send that incriminating picture? If they are doing this--and they have spent the morning proving to each other over and over that they are _doing this_ \--they’re going to have to be more careful with their digital footprint itself as well.

“Relax,” Yuri says, and Otabek does before he even explains, “it’s for Potya.”

“Ah. Yes. Puma Tiger Scorpion, first of her name, should be first to know.” And maybe last. They haven’t worked out all those details yet. Turning his head, Otabek kisses Yuri’s shoulder. “Give her a kiss from me.”

“Which?” Yuri slides his phone onto the nightstand and wraps his other arm around Otabek, too, pressing his mouth to his forehead. “I have a lot to choose from,” he murmurs, smug.

Otabek protests, “You kissed me, too, Yura.”

“Ah, but you--” Yuri taps his lip. “Kissed me first.”

He’ll maybe allow himself a little glee at that. A little. Otabek reaches over their medals for his phone, which he hasn’t glanced at since he messaged Doug and his mother and said that he was taking a late morning (Yuri coordinated his messages to Nikolai, Yakov, Lilia, Yuuri, and Viktor so his timing and statement of the same wouldn’t be too suspiciously similar). His eyes widen when he sees what he’s missed in the interim. _Smart_ timing. “Guess who dropped a new single.”

Yuri stretches and yawns, then drapes himself over Otabek. “D4NG3R, combined with their announcement of a 2020 Revival Tour requested by their only fan?” 

“Almost as good.” Pulling up the music video, Otabek turns his wrist to show him the screen.

“Oh shit! Tansy?” Yuri climbs his back to see better, chin digging into his shoulder. Otabek can smell his honey shampoo. “Oh shit. I haven’t been keeping up. Play it already, Beka!”

This woman knows how to play her cards. She’s waited until the morning after the Olympics tennis finals when Google will be blowing up to release the music video she filmed in January after hearing Otabek’s mixes and watching his match.

Holding his breath, Beka plays the video.

Club scene, purple-blue fog and lights. In the middle of it all is Tansy, tossing her brown waves, lip-syncing her heart out.

Yuri’s already jamming, head going against Otabek’s.

Sometimes the fog and dark will part to show flashes of the extras’ faces, and one such flash reveals the DJ booth, the silhouetted DJ also dancing to the beat he’s serving up. Then Tansy belts out a line about the music in her bones and points up highs.

The DJ slows, and the glimmering lights skate over him. When he’s right in focus, he starts dancing again, slow rolls of his body, straight-faced and serious. The lights swim back onto Tansy, but although Otabek sees her lips part around the lyrics, he can’t hear any words.

Because Yuri is _roaring_ in his ear. Delighted, he thumps him on the back and grabs at his shoulders. “You didn’t say anything! How come you didn’t say anything!”

“Surprise,” Otabek manages before Yuri shoves his phone under the pillow and attacks him with kisses.

“You guest-starred in a Tansy music video, and you didn’t tell me! Damn, Beka.” Yuri shakes his head, tutting. “What am I gonna do with you?” He taps a finger against his smile.

“What haven’t you done already?” Otabek’s wrung out. And completely ready to go again.

Hand sliding under Otabek’s thigh, Yuri nudges it up again, and Otabek goes heavy-lidded and bends, easy. “Is that it? The innermost box?”

Otabek almost kicks him as he snorts. “A _music video_?”

The thumb of Yuri’s other hand drags across Otabek’s lower lip, and he shrugs. “Yeah. Maybe not. Now shut up, I’m going to try for the kiss again."

He barely gets a chance to nod before Yuri bites his neck and bowls him under the sheets again. One arm working itself under the pillow, he turns off his phone so all he can hear is Yuri.

 

“You would think Leroy won the gold with how much he’s posting on Instagram. Like, look at this.” Yuri shows him what, to be fair, is a slightly ridiculous picture: Isabella and JJ squatting with peace signs showing off their gold rings against the silver medal. “You should at least post something. One thing.”

Otabek blows across his cup of tea. “Yes, Yura.” After that soba Yuri so craved, they’re winding down at that teahouse Yuri saw last year in Tokyo. 

They don’t take reservations here, but Yuri browbeat the hostess into promising them the most private table in the restaurant, hidden behind bunches of fragrant flowers. It’s an illusion of their own world, one they won’t be able to hold onto for much longer, and of all the more value for that.

“ _King_ JJ. Do we have any proof that he didn’t give himself that nickname?” Yuri pokes his phone-screen and through the earphones they’re sharing, Tansy’s “Madness” plays again. 

“I didn’t give it to him,” Otabek offers, though he shouldn’t be encouraging him. Then again, he’s spent the last twenty hours encouraging him, so why stop now?

“I still don’t understand how you can be friends with him,” Yuri exclaims. Hastily, he lowers his voice. “I mean...I _still_ don’t get it, at all.”

Otabek rests his chin in his palm. “I’m friends with you,” he points out.

Yuri’s foot presses over Otabek’s, pushing down menacingly. So maybe _friends_ is less accurate than it has ever been. The point still stands. “What the hell does that mean?”

Otabek’s about to dig himself a very deep hole. “You’re alike.”

“We’re _what?”_ Yuri’s volume spikes again. “What do I have in common with that son of a--”

“Big personalities. You command attention. You…” Otabek lights his fingers fondly on Yuri’s slender wrist. “ _Demand_ attention.” 

Grumpy, Yuri draws his hand back and crosses his arms over his chest, looking off to the side. 

Otabek switches tactics. “You’re both my pillars,” he says honestly. Where he is now, in his career, in his contentment, he could have never made it here without either man. 

Yuri wrinkles his nose. His fresh-painted fingernails drum on his biceps. “Cut the sappy shit. Even if he’s been less obnoxious lately, he’s still obnoxious.”

“Less obnoxious?” Otabek smells victory. Or perhaps that’s just the blossoms bobbing above their heads.

Or maybe not. “You’re still on thin ice,” Yuri snaps. Seems it was the flowers after all.

Eventually, he wants to reconcile JJ and Yuri. A long-term goal.

He’ll reintroduce Yuri to everyone, one day, as his partner. He doesn’t need to kiss him in a stadium in front of live television, but he would like to take him on a date in the daylight. Braid his hair before they go out. Come back to a cat they care for together.

For now, they have this sphere of quiet. They have this afternoon in the city and the night in each other’s arms. In the months to come, they will have each other’s voices and faces, and they will have the best of tennis each other has to offer. 

After so long orbiting around each other, those closest to both of them assume nothing will come of Otabek and Yuri. Otabek has assumed the same, and this new reality will take a little adjusting.

For now, Otabek doesn’t mind not telling anyone but each other their truth.

Summer sunlight slants across Yuri’s beautiful features. Under the table, Otabek folds their fingers together.

So many summers ago, he saw the boy with the cat-shaped vibration dampener in his palm, and he didn’t breathe a word about it.

Yuri is the most precious secret Otabek has ever been given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never expected to embark on a fic project of this size, let alone finish it, but i did, wow. i'm not entirely happy w the end product, but i learned a lot on the journey, about writing and about myself! thanks for coming with me.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on my [tumblr!](http://2-weird-4.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rivals?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11742123) by [thisiseclair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiseclair/pseuds/thisiseclair)




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